Game of Thrones / Kit Harrington fans might love Testament of Youth (TRAILER)

It's taken Testament of Youth three quarters of a century to make it onto the movie screen. The memoir, the first of four written by Vera Brittain, and published in 1933 details a young woman's coming of age story during the World War I years. For those of us who seem to enjoy watching history rather than read it, it sounds irresistible. The film which just debuted at the London Film Festival is slated to hit theaters in the UK on January 16, 2015 and here in the states sometime later in the year. (I can't believe it's already time to get that list - guide to movies based on books/2015 - together!)

Alicia Vikander (Kitty in Joe Wright's sumptuous but flawed Anna Karenina) stars as Vera, a brilliant young woman keen to study literature at Oxford and to be a writer. Brittain sacrificed her dreams to serve as a wartime nurse - what else? that's mostly all that women were allowed to do even when there wasn't a war going on - while Kit Harrington, the remaining heartthrob in the Game of Thrones cast, plays soldier, poet, and love interest Roland Leighton. Emily Watson and Dominic Cooper play her parents in the film from British TV director James Kent (Marchlands, Inside Men, The White Queen) with the screenplay written by Juliette Towhidi (Calendar Girls, Love Rosie, Death Comes to Pemberley).

There's a trailer (below) and I've found some images to share with you. Here are a couple of links to reviews from the London Film Festival screening if you want to go there. Variety review by Guy Lodge. The Guardian review by Peter Bradshaw. I think I'll wait and try the memoir first, it sounds incredibly moving. 

And oh by the way, the book was adapted for the small screen back in the 70's by the BBC so yes, some of you have seen it before. I'm curious to see if it rings a bell with me as well. Have any of you read Brittain's memoir? I'm so curious to know more about it; I'm of the generation where both my British grandfathers - one who I saw twice in my life, the other who I never met - fought in that war, while much of my own limited knowledge comes from historical dramas like Downton Abbey and Atonement. Writing that sentence I'm simply amazed by my own lack of historical curiosity but there it is! Shameful.