Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew

by Max Egremont

ISBN: 9781447242000

Published: 2015-03-12

2014 marks the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of what many believed would be the war to end all wars. And while the First World War devastated Europe, it inspired profound poetry âe" words in which the atmosphere and landscape of battle are evoked perhaps more vividly than anywhere else. The poets âe" many of whom were killed âe" show not only the warâe(tm)s tragedy but the hopes and disappointments of a generation of men. In Some Desperate Glory, historian and biographer Max Egremont gives us a transfiguring look at the life and work of this assemblage of poets. Wilfred Owen with his flaring genius; the intense, compassionate Siegfried Sassoon; the composer Ivor Gurney; Robert Graves who would later spurn his war poems; the nature-loving Edward Thomas; the glamorous Fabian Socialist Rupert Brooke; and the shell-shocked Robert Nichols all fought in the war, and their poetry is a bold act of creativity in the face of unprecedented destruction. Some Desperate Glory will...