THERE was an extraordinary and significant omission in Rosemary Goring's choice of 10 books to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World Wart (Checklist, The Herald, July 31).

The importance of Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, the mother of Shirley Williams, has already been recognised by television dramas, one which is currently being filmed by the BBC and the book's continuing popularity, 80 years after its publication.

This book is a moving, honest and influential biographical memoir of that war, significantly by a woman about the personal cost of war on her and the effects on the women who were left behind.

By 1918, Vera Brittain, a middle-class provincial girl, had joined the Voluntary Aid Detach­ment. Her brother, fiancé and two of his friends were all dead.

Her generation had been decimated by war. Her hopes for the future were in shreds.

Brittain immortalises her brother and his friends, Edward, Roland, Victor and Geoffrey, who are not merely names on a war memorial.

We remember them and others on Monday and their generation's sacrifice. However, her deeply passionate anguish can be understood and continue to resonate with those affected by more recent conflicts and global wars, trying to making sense of their personal loss.

Gillian Mawdsley,

23 Orleans Avenue,

Glasgow.