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‘A Student in Arms’: Donald Hankey and Edwardian Society at War by Ross Davies (review)

Donald Hankey was – and has remained – one of the most enigmatic personalities to feature in the narrative of the Great War. Primarily known for a volume of essays reflecting on his experiences as A Student in Arms in Britain’s largely volunteer army, his death on the Somme on 12 October 1916 at the age of 31 led to him being lauded as a ‘soldier-saint’ in the popular press and public imagination. In those essays, published first under that nom-de-plume in the The Spectator magazine and then in a collected volume in 1916, Hankey had written for the general reader from a position within both the army and the Church of England, relating his experience as a combatant in the war to issues of morality and faith. A ‘second series’ was published posthumously in 1917, which included both a short biographical sketch written by his sister, Hilda, and also ‘a fragment of autobiography’.