This sonnet was completed on, or just before, 25th September 1917 and the final draft, of which there were many, bears several amendments by Siegfried Sassoon, whom Owen had met while both men were at Craiglockhart Military Hospital during that summer. However, Anthem for Doomed Youth, in a different form, was first imagined by Owen as early as September 1916. During the summer of 1918, Owen began to assemble a Table of Contents, in preparation for the publication of his first volume of poetry. In this table, he listed Anthem for Doomed Youth under the title ‘Grief’, which shows his intended theme in this piece. In this poem, Owen urges us to remember the dead and shows how he had come of age as a poet.

It is, perhaps, ironic that Jessie Pope should share her date of birth (although not the year) with Wilfred Owen, who vilified her and her type in his poem Dulce et Decorum Est. Her reputation today mainly persists due to Wilfred Owen’s original dedication of that poem to her, and his criticism therein of her type of poet, who glorified war, regardless of the consequences.

Prior to the war, Pope had been a published poet and author and, in common with many others in that profession, turned her hand to writing propaganda poetry. Such verse was widely read at the time, in newspapers and magazines, becoming enormously popular with the general public in the early stages of the conflict. Once the realities of the war began to hit home, however, Pope (unlike many others) ceased writing jingoistic poetry and returned to penning childrens’ stories.

Today, Jessie Pope’s poetry is often studied in schools alongside the work of Wilfred Owen, simply because of that original dedication. She was not a particularly fine poet: indeed her own self-effacing sense of humour left her in no doubt as to her poetic talents. However, she remains one of the most studied female war poets of that generation, thanks almost entirely to Wilfred Owen.

It must be said that when Pope was writing her war poetry, many male war poets were almost as jingoistic and fervent as she was in their messages and content. John McCrae, Rupert Brooke and Julian Grenfell, for example, were among the soldier-poets who wrote of the glories of war during its early stages. It seems, therefore, unfair to criticise Jessie Pope for repeating similar sentiments to these great names: a more justified commentary would be that their poetry is, quite simply better than hers.

Another censure which could be aimed at Pope, as opposed to the soldier-poets of the time, is that she was asking others to fight on her behalf, or as Helen Hamilton put it in The Jingo Woman:

“Can’t you see it isn’t decent,
To flout and goad men into doing,
What is not asked of you.”

However in this aspect, Jessie Pope was not alone. Many non-combatants of both sexes, wrote in the same tone throughout the war, including such literary giants as Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy and Henry Newbolt.

It is really quite unreasonable to judge Pope’s poetry against that of Wilfred Owen: they are poets of different times. Pope wrote no war poetry after 1916; Owen only really began writing in this genre in 1917. Indeed, when we examine how Owen himself was writing at the beginning of the conflict, we discover that in The Ballad of Purchase Money, written in the autumn of 1914, he had written:

“O meet it is and passing sweet
To live in peace with others,
But sweeter still and far more meet
To die in war for brothers.”

Not only does this poem resonate with some of his later Latin tags which he used in Dulce et Decorum Est, it also reflects Owen’s feelings at the time, which would naturally change with his experiences. It must also be said that, in common with some of Pope’s verses, this particular poem simply isn’t very good.

By 1917, Owen was perfectly entitled to feel angry towards those at home who continued to perpetuate “The Old Lie”. However it is just as well that he decided, or was persuaded, to amend and then delete his personal dedication to Jessie Pope, since he would have been criticising her for the content of poems written two years prior to him writing Dulce et Decorum Est and indeed these were views which he can be shown to have shared.

Pope’s poetry is certainly not the greatest of her genre, but she did not claim to be great, or particularly talented. Nonetheless, within the context of that brief period of time at the beginning of the war, her poetry was popular and does provide us with a window into a world which, from a 21st century perspective, seems difficult to understand and appreciate. We should not criticise her for her opinions when they were, quite obviously, shared by many of her contemporaries and we certainly should not judge her just because Wilfred Owen chose to vilify her, despite his own previously held, but all-too-easily forgotten opinions.

Born on 18th March 1893 in Plas Wilmot near Oswestry in Shropshire, Wilfred Owen would eventually become one of the most famous war poets in the English language. His poetry is now most certainly the most widely read and studied within this genre and forms the introduction to the First World War for many individuals.

Wilfred was the oldest of four children, a sister Mary and two brothers, Colin and Harold, all born to Tom Owen and his wife Susan. Until Wilfred was four, the family lived in reasonable comfort in a house belonging to his maternal grandfather, Edward Shaw, a former mayor of the town. However, upon Shaw’s death, it was discovered that he was virtually bankrupt, so the Owens moved to smaller lodgings in Birkenhead, where Wilfred attended the Birkenhead Institute, developing into an earnest and slightly arrogant young man. Throughout his childhood, Owen was greatly influenced by his mother Susan, who firmly believed that her eldest child would one day restore the family fortune.

In 1907 the family moved to Shrewsbury, when Tom Owen was appointed Assistant Superintendent of the Joint Railways. The family’s living conditions improved and Wilfred now attended the Shrewsbury Technical School, where he studied hard, developing his interest in literature and especially the poetry of Keats.

Owen sat and passed the qualifying examination for London University in 1911. Unfortunately, his parents could not afford the fees and Owen had not qualified for a scholarship, so instead he took up the position of assistant to the Vicar of Dunsden in Oxfordshire, in return for which he received additional tuition. However, this proved to be an unhappy time for Owen, who found his religious beliefs sorely tested in this poor parish, especially in the absence of his influential mother. By February 1913, Owen had returned to Shrewsbury and went on to sit for a scholarship at Reading University. Upon failing, however, he gave up on the idea of a university education.

Owen needed to earn a living so he travelled to France where he became an English teacher, initially in Berlitz and then in the Pyrenees, where he became the private tutor to a wealthy family. When the First World War began in August 1914, Owen made no attempt to return home, writing to his mother that he believed his role in the war was to perpetuate the English language. It would be a year before Owen returned to enlist in the Artists’ Rifles in October 1915 and, following months of training, he was commissioned into the Manchester Regiment in June 1916. Owen finally arrived back in France in December 1916, in the middle of the coldest winter of the war.

On March 13th 1917, Owen fell into a cellar and, although he initially thought he had just banged his head, he was actually concussed and was hospitalised for two weeks. At the beginning of April, in heavy fighting around Savy Wood near St Quentin, Owen was caught up in shell fire and spent several days in a shell hole, surrounded by the dismembered remains of a fellow officer. When Owen’s Battalion was relieved on 21st April, it was noticed that his speech was confused and he was shaking. He was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and was eventually sent to Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Edinburgh, where he remained for four months.

While at Craiglockhart, Owen met a fellow patient, Siegfried Sassoon and the two soon became friends, after an initially awkward first meeting. The shy, stammering Owen was somewhat in awe of the decorated war hero Sassoon, but the latter agreed to look at some of Owen’s poetry and perceived a natural talent in a few of his pieces. The more experienced poet encouraged his young protégé, even to the point where the manuscript for one of Owen’s most famous poems, Anthem for Doomed Youth, contains several amendments in Sassoon’s handwriting.

Under Sassoon’s influence, Owen began to write some of his most famous war poems and was also introduced to many literary figures including Robert Graves, Robbie Ross and H G Wells. Owen was declared fit for light duties, leaving Craiglockhart in October 1917, bound for Scarborough. He did not return to France until the end of August 1918, having already begun work on the publication of his first volume of poetry.

In October 1918, Owen was awarded the Military Cross. The citation read: “For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on October 1st/2nd 1918. On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.”

On the morning of November 4th, Owen was shot and killed while attempting to cross the Sambre-Oise Canal. A week later, the Armistice was signed and hostilities ceased. As the church bells began to ring all over England, Tom and Susan awaited news of their beloved eldest son, when the telegram arrived, informing them of his death.

Owen is buried in the tiny Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery at Ors.

To download a printable version of this poem as an A4 Poster, please click on the link below.

Edmund Charles Blunden was born on London on November 1st 1896, the oldest child of headmaster Charles Blunden and his wife, Margaret (née Georgina Margaret Tyler). After the arrival of two more children, the Blundens moved to Yalding in Kent, where Charles became headmaster of the local village school. Edmund passed a very happy childhood here and a further six children were born to Margaret, to whom Edmund was devoted.

Blunden began his senior education at Cleaves Grammar School in 1907, before winning a place at Christ’s Hospital in Horsham, West Sussex, which he attended as a boarder from 1909. Although homesick, Blunden was desperately keen to succeed, and worked hard, publishing his first poem in the school magazine in 1913.

When the First World War began, Blunden completed his final year at school, gaining a scholarship to Queen’s College Oxford, which he duly postponed in favour of a commission in the Royal Sussex Regiment. Following his training, Blunden embarked for France in the spring of 1916, where his battalion saw action on or around the Somme battlefields during that summer. In November, just as the battle was coming to a close, Blunden was awarded the Military Cross for his part in a reconnaissance mission, the citation for which read as follows: “For conspicuous gallantry in action. He displayed great courage and determination when in charge of a carrying party under heavy fire. He has previously done fine work.” Blunden also saw action at Passchendaele in 1917 and then in 1918 was posted to a training camp near Stowmarket in Suffolk.

Despite Blunden’s feelings of guilt over this “safe” posting, he found some compensations: namely a whirlwind romance with blacksmith’s daughter Mary Daines, whom he married in June 1918. By the time Blunden returned to France, the war was actually over and Mary was also pregnant, so he was pleased to be demobilised in February 1919. Blunden’s place at Oxford still awaited and to fill the time until October, he focused on his poetry. In May he wrote, enclosing some poems, to Siegfried Sassoon, newly appointed literary editor of the Daily Herald. Sassoon responded favourably, the two men met and a lifelong friendship began, out of which Blunden was introduced to many other literary figures.

In July 1919, Mary gave birth to a daughter named Joy, who sadly died when only a few weeks old. Both parents were devastated and Blunden threw himself into his work, going up to Oxford as planned in October, where he met Robert Graves, John Masefield, and Robert Nichols. His time at Oxford was cut short, however, when Mary became pregnant again and he had to find work, editing the journal Athenaeum. Another daughter, Clare, was born in October 1920, followed by a son, John two years later, but by now Blunden’s marriage was under severe strain. When Blunden was offered the position of Professor of English at Tokyo University in 1924, he accepted, leaving Mary and his children behind.

While in Japan, Blunden began writing his memoir Undertones of War and also had an affair with his secretary, Aki Hayashi, who returned with him to England at the end of his contract in 1927, although by then their affair had ended. Mary, however, had also met someone else and, upon Blunden’s return, she announced her intention to leave him.

Blunden, again, threw himself into his work, completing Undertones of War and two volumes of poetry, his stretched finances assisted by a gift of £50.00 per month, given to him by Siegfried Sassoon. Blunden’s divorce from Mary was finalised in 1931, after which he began teaching English at Merton College, Oxford. He also compiled the poems of Wilfred Owen and wrote a biography to accompany them for publication, bringing Owen’s work to the attention of the general public.

While at Oxford, Blunden met and married writer Sylva Norman in 1933 and in 1936 he was appointed as an advisor to the Imperial War Graves Commission. At the beginning of the Second World War, Sylva joined the forces and, in her absence, Blunden began a romance with an undergraduate named Claire Poynting. When Sylva heard about this affair, she returned to Oxford, proposing an uneasy compromise, whereby she would remain Blunden’s wife, but allow him to continue seeing Claire. The strain of this situation soon became too much and eventually Blunden and Sylva were divorced and he married Claire in May 1945, by which time he had left Oxford to work at the Times Literary Supplement.

In 1946, Claire gave birth to the first of four daughters, named Margaret, and the following year, Blunden accepted a Foreign Office position in Japan, where the family lived for the next three years and where two further daughters – Lucy and Frances – were born. Upon their return to England, Blunden was awarded the CBE in 1951 and resumed his work at the TLS. In 1953, Blunden collaborated with composer Gerald Finzi to produce a collection of poems by Ivor Gurney, whom both men greatly admired.

The next eleven years were spent as Head of English at the University of Hong Kong, where Blunden’s final daughter, Catherine, was born. When they returned to England in 1964, the family settled at Long Melford in Suffolk. Two years later, Blunden was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, although he was forced to resign from this position after two years due to ill health, following which he became a virtual recluse. Blunden died peacefully in bed on 20th January 1974. At his funeral, Private A F Beeney, a runner from Blunden’s battalion, dropped a wreath of poppies onto the coffin.

Edmund Blunden is generally acknowledged to have spent more time in the trenches than any other major poet of the First World War. He remained deeply troubled by his experiences during the conflict but his words, both poetry and prose, often reflect a more positive perspective. While Blunden may not have been keen to go, he nonetheless tried to focus on nature and the countryside and, above all, the comradeship of those with whom he felt privileged to have served.

by Nicholas Murray

Published by: Little, Brown

Cover Price: £25.00

All references given below refer to the hardback edition.

Before reviewing this book, I thought I would read the opinions of others and, upon doing so, discovered it had been almost universally praised as “an excellent book”, “a fine account of poetic sensibility of the period”, “a fabulous book” and “an important study”, with the only criticisms being that it does not include enough actual poetry analysis (although it doesn’t promise this); there is a mis-spelling of Lascelles Abercrombie (which, indeed, there is on page 23); and that the poetry is not set out properly where a quotation begins mid-way through a line. With these minor foibles and thoughts in mind, I sat down expecting a treat of interesting portraits and experiences of twelve war poets.

Within seven pages, I started to wonder: for it is here that Mr Murray includes Wilfred Owen’s famous Preface to his collection of poetry which was published posthumously. This immediately rang alarm bells, as it is quoted in the unaltered version, which Owen himself amended. What, I wondered, could have been Mr Murray’s source for this quotation? Turning to the “Notes” at the back of the book, I found it to be Poems by Wilfred Owen (1921), Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon, p.vi. Unfortunately, although I have an extensive collection, I am not lucky enough to number this title amongst my own books and cannot immediately verify this quotation. I can say, however, that in the manuscript, which is widely reproduced, Owen changed the Preface, making various crossings out, which are not represented in Mr Murray’s quoted version. It seemed a little strange, therefore, that Mr Murray should use a form of this Preface which is not in use anywhere else and which Owen amended before his death.

Undeterred by this confusion, I continued reading until page 40, when I happened upon an account of Julian Grenfell being dispatched to France in August 1914. This I knew to be inaccurate, as Grenfell was serving in India at the time. He sailed for England on 25th August, and did not embark for France until October 6th. Interestingly a correct account is given of these events (albeit loosely) a little later in the book, and then contradicted again in the “Military Chronology” at the rear, which states that Grenfell not only went to France in August 1914, but was also awarded his D.S.O. during the same month, when he actually earned his medal in November. Other mistakes surrounding Grenfell include Mr Murray’s assertion that Julian was the second son of Baron and Lady Desborough, when he was in fact their first-born child, arriving on 30th March 1888, 13 months after Willie and Ettie Grenfell were married. At the time of Julian’s birth, Willie Grenfell was not Baron Desborough, as Mr Murray implies, since this title was only conferred upon him in 1905.

The first chapter includes other errors, such as a comment that John Masefield was much too old to fight, at the age of thirty-four. In fact, Masefield was thirty-six in 1914 (his date of birth is acknowledged as 1st June 1878 by the John Masefield Society) and he did serve as an orderly in a British Red Cross hospital in France, being (according to The Winter of the World by Dominic Hibberd and John Onions) not fit for military service. Edward Thomas, another poet featured later in this book, was three months older than Masefield, but at no point does Mr Murray seem to consider him as being too old to fight, making this seem rather an unnecessary comment.

While I’m on the subject of Edward Thomas, who shares a chapter with Ivor Gurney and Edmund Blunden, I must, once again object to a misquoted poem. In Thomas’s In Memoriam (Easter 1915) – from which, by the way, the second part of the title is missing – Mr Murray misquotes the final line. In this same chapter, we are also told about Edmund Blunden’s enlistment in August 1915, although this is contradicted in the “Military Chronology” when his enlistment date is given as August 1914. We’re then informed that Blunden, at the age of seventeen, was transferred from Victoria to Etaples. This is clearly wrong as Blunden was nineteen when he embarked for France in spring 1916, having been born in November 1896.

Siegfried Sassoon, who became a close friend and mentor of Blunden’s, barely warrants a mention here, although Mr Murray does allow Sassoon an entire chapter to himself (in which Blunden isn’t mentioned at all), describing at length his life before, during and after the war. He tells us, for example that Sassoon’s father left the family home when his son was seven years old: he was, in fact not yet five. He also describes David Thomas and Sassoon as “lovers”, which by modern-day interpretation implies a physical relationship, of which there is no evidence. (Mr Murray uses this phrase misleadingly again later in the book, while alluding to the relationship between Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton). In one passage on page 116, he describes Sassoon’s July medical board and the orders he received to go to Craiglockhart. This is such a direct copy of the words of Rupert Hart-Davis from Sassoon’s 1915-1918 diaries, that it really ought to be in quotes – but it isn’t. A little later, Mr Murray tells us that Sassoon threw his medal into the River Mersey, when, according to both Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Max Egremont’s excellent biography of the poet, it was only the medal ribbon that Sassoon jettisoned.

I could go on (and on), as these are just some of the examples of the many errors and inaccuracies to be found in this disappointing book. I must say, however, that I found one of the most infuriating comments made by Mr Murray to be a note in which he corrects an evident error made by Ivor Gurney! The words “glass houses” and “stones” spring to mind, especially when one bears in mind the hugely underrated genius that was Ivor Gurney: to pick him up, so crassly, on such a minor matter, when this book is so littered with errors and inaccuracies is, frankly, unbelievable.

Mr Murray’s bibliography is extensive: listing over two hundred books on this subject. It seems a shame to me that he did not refer to them more closely. Just to give one example (of many): Nicholas Mosley’s worthy biography of Julian Grenfell, from which Mr Murray quotes freely, ought to have at least helped him acknowledge the order in which the Grenfell children were born. Some might argue that these are only “details”, but such “details” are important and help to make sense, for example, of Ettie Grenfell’s attitude to her son’s memory. Julian was her first-born son; he was the heir to the title and Ettie had plans for him and his future. His death dealt her an enormous blow, as did that of her second son, Billy. In the years that followed, she manipulated the manner in which each of her sons would be remembered.

Another bone of contention for me within this book, has to be the sheer amount of quotations that are included in the text. By way of a random experiment, I chose a page – by allowing the book to fall open – and counted the number of words written by Mr Murray, as opposed to those quoted. In this instance, over three quarters of the page consisted of quotations, much in blocks of text, with little original writing by the author. This example, I am afraid to say, is not untypical. While it is very interesting to read diary extracts, letters and memoirs, the choices made by the author are selective, to prove a point and none really offer any new insights into the poets themselves. Mr Murray acknowledges the usefulness of the many biographies written by others about the lives of the poets and, there are times when this book feels as though it is made up of the workings of many authors, edited together by Mr Murray.

The subtitle of the book has also given me pause for thought, being – I believe – somewhat misleading. “The Brave and Brief Lives of the War Poets” had suggested to me that I would be reading about poets who had died during or immediately after the First World War, making for some unusual choices. I was, therefore, rather surprised to find Sassoon, Graves, Blunden and Jones listed on the Contents page, all of whom lived to a ripe old age. This strikes me as a strange use of the word “brief” and also as somewhat of a waste, when there are poets whose lives fit the bill perfectly and whose poetry is almost unheard of, or generally ignored today and which would benefit from being brought to the public eye. Mr Murray could have chosen from, for example, Francis Ledwidge, T. M. Kettle, John William Streets, William Noel Hodgson, Robert Ernest Vernede or E. A. Mackintosh, all of whom died in the First World War, had fascinating lives and wrote glorious poetry.

I am sure that some people will think I am being a little (or a lot) too picky; focusing too much on factual accuracy. However, in a book like this, if the author isn’t going to be troubled with factual accuracy, he or she may as well write a novel. This is the type of book which may well be read by students, teachers and those with a general interest in the topic, all of whom will hope – like me – to glean some new information on this theme. The readers of this book have a right to expect that the subjects will be treated with respect: properly and thoroughly researched; that quotations will be accurate and that – at the very least – the text will not confusingly contradict itself. More importantly than that, however, is the debt that is owed to the poets themselves. Considering what these brave men went through to bring us their poetry – their legacy – the least they deserve is that those who are writing about them bother to get it right.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

In order to verify the inaccuracies contained within this book, I have referred to the following texts:

Violets from Oversea by Tonie and Valmai Holt
Siegfried Sassoon – A Biography by Max Egremont
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 edited and introduced by Rupert Hart-Davis
Siegfried Sassoon: The Making of a War Poet: A Biography 1886-1918 by Jean Moorcroft Wilson
Siegfried’s Journey by Siegfried Sassoon
The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston by Siegfried Sassoon
The Poems of Wilfred Owen edited and with a memoir by Edmund Blunden
Wilfred Owen: The Last Year by Dominic Hibberd
The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas edited by R. George Thomas
Julian Grenfell by Nicholas Mosley
Stars in a Dark Night: The Letters from Ivor Gurney to the Chapman Family by Anthony Boden
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden
Edmund Blunden – A Biography by Barry Webb
Anthem for Doomed Youth by Jon Stallworthy
Robert Graves – The Assault Heroic 1895-1926 by Richard Perceval Graves
Robert Graves – The Years with Laura 1926-1940 by Richard Perceval Graves
Robert Graves and the White Goddess 1940-1985 by Richard Perceval Graves
The Winter of the World: Poems of the Great War edited by Dominic Hibberd and John Onions