Peasants and Partisans, Stranger Selves: Stuart Hood’s Memoir Project and Second World War Life Writing

Abstract

This essay is the first detailed critical analysis of Pebbles from My Skull/ Carlino (1963/1985), Stuart Hood’s account of the 1943/4 period he spent fighting as part of the Italian Resistance. It situates Hood’s work in relation to the prevailing ‘Colditz Myth’ associated with British Second World War prisoner of war escapees and the conceptions of England and Europe underlying this myth. It also considers Hood’s ‘memoir project – the self-reflexive narrative of self he was compelled to tell, extending across multiple texts, and to which he was reluctant to give final form or finished meaning – in relation to recent theoretical work on life writing and military life writing in particular.