Some Desperate Glory (37 page)

Authors: Max Egremont

BOOK: Some Desperate Glory

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Robert Nichols after the war. He wrote of the shock of battle, âHow can a boy consider what he can't imagine?'

Edmund Blunden and his first wife, Mary. Blunden wrote later that âI was not anxious to go' to the war yet thought âwhen will kindness have such power again?'

Robert Graves as a young officer. He was proud of having fought but thought his own war poems âjournalistic'.

Wilfred Owen in uniform. He told his mother from the front that âI cannot do a better thing or be in a better place'.

Wilfred Owen and Laurent Tailhade. The Frenchman was the first poet that Owen knew well.

The first draft of Wilfred Owen's âAnthem for Doomed Youth', with Siegfried Sassoon's amendments.

The New Menin Gate at Ypres. Unveiled as a war memorial in 1927, it was derided by Siegfried Sassoon as a pompous âsepulchre of crime'.

Edmund Blunden
(left
), Siegfried Sassoon (
centre
), and Dennis Silk at Heytesbury, where the ageing Sassoon sought refuge from the modern world.

ALSO BY MAX EGREMONT

NONFICTION

The Cousins

Balfour: A Life of Arthur James Balfour

Under Two Flags: The Life of Major General Sir Edward Spears

Siegfried Sassoon: A Life

Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia

FICTION

The Ladies' Man

Dear Shadows

Painted Lives

Second Spring

Illustration Credits

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the following:

reproduced with permission, The Ivor Gurney Estate.

special Collections and Archives, Cardiff University Library, and the estate of Edward Thomas.

The private collection of William Graves.

with kind permission of the Trustees of the Wilfred Owen Estate, The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford. Image courtesy of the First World War Poetry Digital Archive, University of Oxford.

with kind permission of the Trustees of the Wilfred Owen Estate, The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford.

With kind permission of the Trustees of the Wilfred Owen Estate and copyright Â© The British Library Board (Add MS 43721, f. 54).

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Originally published in 2014 by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, Great Britain

Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

First American edition, 2014

Owing to limitations of space, illustration credits can be found at the back of the book.

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014937209

E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71303-4

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