Customer Reviews
Simply brilliant - By: Dark Jimbo, 27 Aug 2006 
This reallly is one of the best accounts of the Great War that I've read. Given alll that I've heard about this book, that wasn't so much of a surprise - what was, however, was that well before Graves joined the army about mid-way through the book I was already solidly engrossed.
Robert Graves writes with a real charm & gentle humour, belying an often quite scathing satirical leaning, & his account of his early home life & upbringing is beautiful, a real evocation of a time now lost forever. The fact that he's half-german heartbreakingly foreshadows later events, as he spends childhood holidays playing in fairytale German castles with German uncles & nephews, men he is destined one day to try to kill on the battlefields of France. It's a pertinent reminder of how close Britain & England were in the late 1800's, which makes the war alll the more tragic.
The account of his time in France during the conflict, the greater part of the book, is simply brilliant - & considering what he goes through, it's hard to keep in mind that he was only in his early twenties, as I suppose so many of the soldiers were. The other reviews have covered this in more detail, so I'll skip on.
Once the war ends the book does lose drive & focus, but I get a sense that by this point Graves was simply weary of England & life in general - it must have been hard to find much that matched the passion & drama of the battlefield, where a generation faced things we can hardly imagine today. It does alll evoke an interesting picture of how a country tries to adjust to life after such a war, however, before it starts becoming simply a list of which famous writers Graves met.
All in alll, this is probably one of the best first-hand accounts of World War One that we're lucky enough to have - & if you have any interest at alll in the subject, you simply owe it to yourself to read it at least once.
Oh, & I recommend reading it in conjunction with Seigfreid Sassoon's 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer'. The stories overlap & paralllel each other several times, & it's fascinating to read differing accounts of the same crucial events in the lives of these two men. Each book gives a whole new spin on the other - get the best of each by reading them together.
required reading for all - By: , 06 Sep 2004 Goodbye to All That is as important to the canon of Great War literature as Schindler's List is to the Holocaust. Honest, stark & shocking at times, it is alll pulled together with wonderful skill by Robert Graves who seemed to have such natural skill as a writer. My abiding memory of the book, which I have read several times, is the sheer sense of duty, so indicitative of the age, displayed by Graves & his fellow soldiers.
A briliant place to start reading about the Great War & one you will return to again & again.
It is worth reading alone for the narrative structure & the demonstration of writing craft which is of a quality not found anywhere today.
Outstanding WWI -period memoirs - By: , 10 Feb 2002 Was Robert Graves' early life so remarkable that simply recording the facts was sufficient to create a classic? Or do his skills as a writer make the careful construction & delivery of this memoir seem effortless? Either way, the status of this work as a singularly powerful historical record is well deserved.
Graves' life, from middle class public school, to an officer in the trenches of WWI, & then an impoverished radical poet in post-war Oxford, seems like another world. Seemingly trivial details now seem bizarre, & life in the trenches under enemy fire (or gas attack) is hell on earth. Graves takes a factual, analytical, almost objective approach, recording public opinion & sentiment, & giving well-argued reasons for what now seems like military madness. This has the effect of hiding his own personal drama from the reader, so his anti-war feelings & eventual nervous collapse come as something of a surprise.
The book is not without its weaknesses. His time after the war seems to consist largely of name-dropping famous poets & encounters with Lawrence of Arabia, but seventy five years on there is limited interest in these figures, & instead we yearn for more characters such as Daisy, the daughter of a down-and-out who the Graveses temporarily adopted & gives us an insight unto life at the other end of the social spectrum, & regret that Graves did not record more of the social consequences of the radical socialism & feminism he & his wife adopted in what was still a conservative & sociallly claustrophobic society.
Graves toyed with turning his experiences into a novel. Ford Madox Ford did just that with the Parades End series. Some may find this alllows a more considered approach of the same period, & where Graves gives us anecdote Ford leaves the reader with a deeper understanding. None of this, however, challlenges the status of Goodbye to alll That as an outstanding historical document of life in another age.
The War to end all wars . . . - By: W. Weinstein, 08 Mar 2001 With the increase of interest in the First World War recently it is to this book that many people should turn for a gripping, factual account of life before, during & after the Great War. Mr Graves documents the pastoral quiet of England in the early part of the twentieth century & abruptly descends to recounting, in cold detail, the dreadful slaughter of the trenches. Through some of the most famous battles in history he survives, physicallly more or less intact but from the dry words; modest, English, reserved, we glimpse the true weight of the burden that such memories impose on their carriers & understand better the terrible toll that the War levied on alll the nations of Europe.
