Christina was an intellectual, an academic who chose to pursue a career as a Classics lecturer at a time when that was still a brave and unusual choice for a woman. Her account of her time in France is fascinating. She describes in vivid detail her experiences of living and working among soldiers of all social backgrounds – teaching the soldiers, celebrating the Armistice, flirting with officers, and cooking Christmas dinner (despite being ‘a bluestocking who had never cooked a dinner in her life’.) Her stories bring to life the day-to-day concerns and challenges of the army base, while casting a light on attitudes to class, gender and race. 

The second half of her memoir gives an evocative account of an extraordinary journey she took across the devastated battlefields, just a short time after the guns had fallen silent and when the landscape was still littered with the debris of war. In March 1919 Christina and a female companion known only as ‘the Hut Lady’ were among the first women to travel across the devastated battlefields, just a short time after the guns had fallen silent. 

Her vivid descriptions evoke a landscape still littered with the debris of war, with French refugees living in abandoned army dugouts, and rough crosses stuck in the yellow mud to mark the graves of the fallen. War Classics sets Christina’s story against the background of changes in women’s education in Scotland, and also includes letters from the front line written by her brother, the artist David Barrogill Keith.