The book was dramatised by Elaine Morgan as a five-part serial which was transmitted on BBC2 in 1979. This version features Cheryl Campbell as Vera Brittain, Peter Woodward as Roland Leighton, Joanna McCallum as Winifred Holtby and Emrys James and Jane Wenham as Vera's parents.
In 1998, to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the Armistice, a fifteen-part radio dramatisation of the letters on which Testament of Youth was partly based was broadcast on BBC Radio Four. Entitled Letters from a Lost Generation, it was dramatised by Mark Bostridge and starred Amanda Root as Vera Brittain and Rupert Graves as Roland Leighton.
In 2009 it was announced that the feature film Testament of Youth was in development by BBC Films and Heyday Films producer David Heyman, and was to be directed by James Kent. This had the support of the Vera Brittain Estate, Brittain's daughter Shirley Williams, and Brittain's biographer Mark Bostridge who is acting as a consultant.[4] Saoirse Ronan was cast to play Brittain in 2012[5] but was replaced in December 2013 when it was announced that Alicia Vikander would play Vera Brittain in the film which was released in late 2014 as part of the First World War commemorations. On 4 February 2014 Kit Harington joined the cast to play the role of Brittain's fiancé Roland Leighton.[6] On 13 February 2014, Colin Morgan, Taron Egerton, and Alexandra Roach were announced to have joined the film's cast.[7] An ensemble cast was later confirmed as filming began, including Dominic West, Emily Watson, Joanna Scanlan, Hayley Atwell, Jonathan Bailey and Anna Chancellor.[8] It substituted Merton College, Oxford in the scenes showing Brittain's time as a student at Somerville College, arguing that filming in Somerville itself would have been too difficult in light of the new buildings constructed there since the film's time period.[9]
