tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20999574372288925232024-03-12T23:12:17.743-07:00Siegfried Sassoon FellowshipSiegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-912292339416400662023-02-14T07:34:00.005-08:002023-02-14T07:34:54.038-08:00Book Review: Forgotten Heroes - Rediscovered for the Digital Age <p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Post by Irene McCready</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>Forgotten Heroes - Rediscovered for the Digital Age: </i></span></span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: times; font-size: large;">An Anthology of Tweets for the War Poets Association </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: times; font-size: large;">(edited by </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Samuel Gray). </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: times; font-size: large;">War Poets Association, 2022.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The period of lockdown proved to be a productive spell for many, especially so for Samuel Gray, known to many of us through membership of various poetry and literary societies. It was one of these organisations, the War Poets Association, that commissioned Sam to edit this anthology with very pleasing results. The concept of "tweeting" one’s favourite poems from the First World War was a brilliant one, and over the course of the lockdown the collection of poem and poets grew and this fascinating book emerged.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">Sam Gray tells us that the anthology contains 294 poems by 133 poets. Many are well- known to this reader, e.g. Julian Grenfell and W N Hodgson, </span><span style="font-family: times;">but</span><span style="font-family: times;"> </span><span style="font-family: times;">some are entirely new, e.g. Clifford Flower, Digby Haseler, and these poems came as a delightful surprise. </span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The poets selected cover a broad spectrum and apart from Ivor Gurney there is only a scattering of the most-read poets Wilfred Owen is included twice and Sassoon three times. German and other European poets are heavily represented, Georg Trakl being the most familiar (four poems). Alfred Lichtenstein is also a popular choice (six). Vera Brittain is the most well-known of the 16 female poets who have been included in the book (nine poems). But there are others; Mary Borden features well as does May Wedderburn Cannon.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The structure of the anthology is simple; Sam Gray has logically divided it into eleven separate sections which denote the escalation/progression of the war, starting with "Anticipation and Preparation" and ending with "Legacy - Peace, Hope, Diplomacy". The intervening sections cover poems relating to "No Man's Land", "Bereavement", "Patriotism", and so on.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">From three or four of these eleven sections, I have selected a few poems which have appealed to me. I do not propose to go into any in-depth analysis of each poem. I have chosen them because they contain something of my understanding of the war and chime with my experience of my many visits to the battlefields of the Western Front.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Sam Gray heads the first section with an Ivor Gurney poem entitled “To The Poet Before Battle” (p 11), in which he urges the poet to do justice to the craft and justice to himself in war. Hungarian poet Ferenc Bekassy caught my attention in this segment with his poem “1914” (p 21). There are seven verses of rhyming couplets encapsulating the soldier’s experience of this war. The first verse contains the euphoria of the first recruits to enlist about which we have read so much. The eagerness, the enthusiasm, it is all there. “He went without fears, he went gaily, since go he must”. But the second verse brings us back down to reality. “He fell without a murmur in the noise of battle, found rest”. He with “so many thousand lay round him” It would need his mother to identify him. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The poem moves on to say that he was not a pawn but a human being and his life was cut short. No chance for him of marriage and a home. The poem ends with a plea from the poet, “Mourn, O my sisters singly, for a hundred thousand dead”. A bilingual Cambridge graduate and friend of Rupert Brooke, Bekassy died on the Russian front in 1915. Friend and poet Frances Cornford pays a poignant tribute to him with her poem “Feri Bekassy” (p 77).</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">German poet Alfred Lichtenstein writes “Before dying I must make my poem. Quiet, comrades, don’t disturb me”. This is the opening line of "Leaving for the Front" (P26). “Soon they’ll be throwing me into a nice mass grave” This is a short, sardonic poem, an effective evocation of what the ordinary recruit could expect from war. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">E A Mackintosh, a particular favourite of mine, is featured in the section "No Man’s Land", in his poem of the same name. (p 59). On sniper duty, looking out onto the landscape, he reflects on the possibilities of the night. He experiences the sound of the wind in the trees and noises on the enemy front line: “Is it the wind in the branches sighing, Or a German trying to stop a sneeze” This takes the poet back in time to his place of longing and more cultured sneezes. But he knows that he is in the same position as the German opposite and he too is cold. This breaks the deadlock and the Boche prepares to move; there the poet can’t be sure that he is still in firing sight nor does he care. “Anyway, shooting is over-bold” “Oh, damn you, get back to your trench, you blighter. I really can’t shoot a man with a cold”.</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Mackintosh, a lieutenant in the Seaforth Highlanders, was killed in action on 21st November 1917 and is buried in Orival Wood Cemetery near Flesquieres. In July 2015, almost 98 years after his death, I had occasion to visit his grave, together with the rest of a Western Front tour. Someone very thoughtfully produced a bottle of scotch whisky and we were able to toast him with a “dram”.</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Patriotism and Sacrifice: God and Death", with 72 entries, is by far the largest section of Sam Gray’s categories. There are many interesting inclusions, but the one which stands out for me is Leslie Coulson’s “Who Made The Law?” (p 79). It begins with the question “Who made the Law that men should die in meadows?”…. “Who gave it forth that gardens should be bone-yards? Who spread the hills with flesh, with blood and brains? Who made the Law?” The poem carries on in much the same vein: this is a cry from the poet’s heart, written in 1916 when soldiers were no longer under the illusion that sacrifice was “sweet and fitting”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It is not my intention to bore the reader by discussing every poem which appealed to me and so I will to scurry through the remaining categories of this fascinating volume and make one or two selections which strongly resonate with me.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Margaret Postgate Cole was familiar to me as political sociologist, therefore her appearance in this book took me completely by surprise. I especially enjoyed her very beautiful poem “Falling Leaves”. (p 132) which is under the heading of "Family, Bereavement and Mourning". Also on a similar theme of unnecessary sacrifice is Sarojini Naidu’s “The Gift of India” (p 135). This section features a greatest number of women poets, Vera Brittain having the most entries. Reading through her pieces, all of which are about the men she lost, it is easy to understand how she she was able to write such a haunting, soulful memoir as <i>Testament of Youth</i> which, once read, has remained in my memory over many decades.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“Scots and Mud`’ was a short segment of this anthology, surprisingly so when one thinks about the living conditions in the average trench. There are a few excerpts from letters on the subject by Ivor Gurney, Wilfred Owen and others, but the clearest voice is that of Mary Borden with her epic poem “The Song of Mud” (p 119/20). These 50-plus lines of blank verse teeter on the verge of a rhythmic rant. Mud is the enemy of them all; it is “The impertinent, the intrusive, the ubiquitous, the unwelcome”. She tells the reader that this mud gets everywhere, in everything, and it “Soaks up the fire, the noise; soaks up the energy and the courage; Soaks up the power of the armies”. It “hides bodies” and yet it is “beautiful, glistening, golden mud that covers the hills like satin”. Mary Borden has painted a superb word-picture, terse, taut and yet graphic; worthy of the finest sepia prints.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">A little humour on which to end: `”Lieutenant Tatoon MC” is a glorious piece of doggerel penned by Siegfried Sassoon’s friend and mentor Edward Carpenter. The tale of his protest is told in 12 verses; all amusing and accurate. One wonders what Siegfried really thought of it; perhaps someone out there reading this, knows?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">Sam Gray, in conjunction with the War Poets Association, has gifted a little gem to the poetry-reading public. From poems tweeted to him, he has selected examples which cover most aspects of The Great War. </span><span style="font-family: times;">He has included many unknown and little-known names There have also been a few surprises; for example, I was unaware that William Orpen was a poet as well as a war artist.</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I particularly enjoyed the biographical sketches heading some of the poems, also the mention of links between poets - that Max Plowman was treated at Craiglockhart by Dr Rivers was another piece of information, new to me. Space and time permitting, more of these interjections would have been very welcome.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Overall this is a splendid volume of poems and one which I will keep close at hand for a long time to come and I hope that any reader of this piece will have a similar enjoyable experience with this highly accessible anthology.</span></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-11163637817283192832022-11-22T08:15:00.003-08:002022-11-22T08:15:36.755-08:00Return to Ypres -12 years on<p style="text-align: justify;">In 2010 the SSF ran a very successful coach trip to Ypres and the Western Front, one of the most ambitious things we've undertaken. I've revisited some of the sites in intervening years, in the company of Vivien Whelpton, and have recently been on another trip, which brought back some good memories.</p><div dir="auto" style="text-align: justify;">Those who were also with us in 2014, when we ventured out to the battlefields on the first of the "Poets of the Great War" tours run by Battle Honours, will recall our visit to La Peylouse, the lovely chateau owned by the charming Sassoon enthusiast Didier Rousseau, who during the centenary period ran an exhibition about Sassoon and his contemporaries. On the first morning of this year's tour, Didier welcomed us into "La Poudriere", the 17th century ammunition store that was saved from demolition and preserved for posterity by him and his late wife Luce, some years ago.
La Poudriere now operates as a kind of arts centre, and here we were treated to drinks while Clive gave an overview of the Manoir's First World War history as a training school set up by Douglas Haig and later an HQ for the Portuguese contingent. Viv gave an overview of Siegfried Sassoon and his connections with the area. Unfortunately, our hectic schedule combined with heavy rain caused our visit to be shorter than we would have liked.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Our 2010 trippers will also remember Jack Sturiano, who masterminded that ambitious tour of Ypres and the surrounding area for us. Jack still lives in Ypres and a group of us met up with him in the evening for a pizza and a drink before going on to the nightly commemoration at the Menin Gate. He sends his good wishes to all SSF members. (Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One place we did not go in 2010 was the small town of Poperinge, best known in First World War history as being a place where executions by firing squad were carried out, but also for something much more pleasant - Talbot House, where Toc H was launched, offering a haven for British soldiers in the region. For some years, the town was plagued with extensive building work and road works, which made it almost impossible to park a coach. Now the traffic problems have eased, and for the first time I was able to see inside Talbot House. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiEYfpPBvF2tZwDxJksT6rYqppx7EiFwZ7dUQP5Gtqa-AZen9MOKGkNmhDAkK5myyOIxsQQpYvrYtOyEQiD5HeGOMVB016q7Cn3uzZOwPPZdmZhqFTycS1O_Co8ScoQ3havTE1BGLFb-jxnWhi5iZYqiddh-vsjBk-aTLLrHLOOu0wluB_rTxQuayTM" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiEYfpPBvF2tZwDxJksT6rYqppx7EiFwZ7dUQP5Gtqa-AZen9MOKGkNmhDAkK5myyOIxsQQpYvrYtOyEQiD5HeGOMVB016q7Cn3uzZOwPPZdmZhqFTycS1O_Co8ScoQ3havTE1BGLFb-jxnWhi5iZYqiddh-vsjBk-aTLLrHLOOu0wluB_rTxQuayTM=w304-h228" width="304" /></a></div>Readers of <i>Siegfried's Journal</i> will recall that, during lockdown, Talbot House was threatened with closure. We featured the old house on the cover of one issue and included a message from Simon Louagie, the manager, appealing for financial support. The appeal was a success and, having now actually visited, I consider that this was a very worthwhile cause. We happened to visit on a beautiful September day and were able to enjoy the gardens and even a "proper" cup of tea, complete with scone. I use the singular because there was only one scone left at the time - but it was easily big enough for me and my husband to share.</div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Who should have been in the garden, going over future plans for the museum on his laptop with one of the volunteers, but Simon Louagie, and we chatted with both of them about the next steps. I do wish that it was possible to do something about that final set of steps up to the chapel, as I really did fear I would break my neck - and of course it would be impossible for anyone with mobility problems to reach it and imbibe the atmosphere - but they can at least enjoy the museum, in a modern building behind the original house, where hundreds of artefacts are laid out for the public to view. I hope to return one day.</div></div>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-85449160508441103932022-07-18T07:11:00.000-07:002022-07-18T07:11:27.940-07:00"Benediction" - a review by Cynthia Greenwood<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;">I enjoy historical plays and novels and have, of course, seen some of them as films. I have therefore heard quite a lot of the sort of thing where well-dressed characters shout across rooms things like:</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-ead7c8b6-7fff-6073-1b7d-bc3b2dcff981"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “You really must meet Oscar Wilde – and Bernard Shaw will be here in a few minutes!”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shaw certainly arrives but he looks as if his spiky red beard is only being held on by will power. I was reminded of such scenes as I watched parts of <i style="text-align: left;">Benediction</i> such as the bit where Sassoon is about to get married and we suddenly discover that no less a person than T.E. Lawrence is among the guests! As well as observing unintended humour in historical films I also spent a lot of time having the facts of Sassoon’s life and work knocked into me by the conventional methods of studying biographies, poems, critical works etc. Was I approaching the poet in too enclosed and regimented a manner? As I watched <i style="text-align: left;">Benediction</i> I began to think so. There were times when we were not sure what year it was or whether Sassoon was still in the army. People seemed to float about possibly suggesting the trauma of war. The words contemplation and pause seemed to be brought to mind as we watched that strange period between the wars being re-created</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In <i>Benediction</i> we have a concentration on Sassoon’s personal life and relationships from when he joined the army to his marriage and old age. Now that homosexuality is being more fully accepted it seems appropriate to focus on Sassoon’s personal life, but I must confess to feeling the lack in the film of references to him writing and struggles with his poetry, except voice-overs. The play <i>Not About Heroes</i>, dealing with Sassoon and Owen’s relationship and their efforts to write and find a new language to express the horror of war, seemed powerfully dramatic and involving compared to <i>Benediction</i>’s views of several rather unremarkable young men being vaguely witty in Art Deco settings! </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, in order to get my reactions to the film into perspective I decided to think about what I really liked about it. Firstly, I found the camera work fascinating. Anything to do with the photography seemed to have both an obvious meaning and a more symbolic one. For example, at the beginning of the film, we see the front of a concert hall as the camera sweeps down from a black and sinister sky. Inside the hall the camera moves towards a sea of faces all intently listening to the music. Sassoon's is one of the faces. These faces echo the black and white footage that appears from time to time in the film showing more faces of soldiers marching, waiting, going over the top. It is as if these black and white images are a kind of shorthand for reminding us that it was the First World War that produced the post war world we see in the film. This careful attention to the “design” of the film is seen repeatedly. For example, we see Sassoon’s home, where his mother lives, and the camera moves slowly as if relishing the books and keepsakes of the nineteenth century, a peaceful time before the war. Again, the camera moves slowly round Sassoon as he sits in church, possibly wondering about his future conversion to Catholicism. When Owen and Sassoon say goodbye at Craiglockhart the camera concentrates on them going very slowly down the stairs as if wanting to prolong their time together. This lingering over valuable things from the past contrasts violently with the wild dancing of the Charleston and Tango which seems to represent a new, lively and perhaps more superficial age. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I did have a problem with the rapid cutting from one scene to another and with the large sections of Sassoon’s life that were left out of the film. We saw little of his youth – no hunting or cricket and his early attempts at writing are missed out. Though there is a voice-over of his protest, it is not emphasised. I felt that people who did not know much about Sassoon would be confused, especially as there were sometimes quick cuts between the scenes. On the other hand, the quick switches from one scene to another may have been meant to show Sassoon’s own confusion due to the war. I remember trying to work out if he had left the army yet, but he was probably equally confused by the chaos of the battlefields and the constant cancelling of orders by superior officers.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, the film deals with a very specific period of Sassoon’s life, the period between the wars, so it is only fair to examine how it succeeds in achieving its aims here. The film has strong pictorial and “design” qualities shown in the camera work noted above. The move from the fussiness of Sassoon’s mother’s rooms from a bygone era, to the battlefields, then to the comparative peace of sleek, expensive Art Deco rooms successfully makes the central part of the film feel like a well of peace and quiet, despite the emotional stress Sassoon is going through. Interestingly, in the latter part of the film in which Peter Capaldi takes over the role of Sassoon, we see almost claustrophobic later twentieth century rooms as if emphasising that the war achieved nothing. This way that the pictorial and design qualities seem to act as a kind of emphasis for the subject of the film is very interesting. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately, I did not feel that the script came up to a high level. At first it is entertaining to see a group of young men exchanging jokes rather as if they were in an Oscar Wilde play, but when the jokes are not that good it soon palls and you start looking at the architecture of the room for distraction! However, the acting was very good throughout, I thought. One big advantage that the film had was that even the very small parts were played by important actors so Sassoon’s mother, the older Hester Gatty, the chief medical officer at Craiglockhart, etc., made as much impact as the major players. In this way a whole believable world was created round Sassoon. The main actors seemed to be squeezing every ounce of meaning out of their roles. Jeremy Irvine (Ivor Novello) really seemed to show the different sides of his personality, one minute singing and playing popular songs then being selfish and demanding. His eyes did look “angry” as a party guest remarked. Calam Lynch as Stephen Tennant was in a state of collapse one minute and launching cynical witticisms the next. You could easily see how he might provoke sympathy and affection. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Matthew Tennyson, as </span><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilfred Owen, expressed the liveliness which is not often seen in stage portrayals of Owen, who is frequently shown as just the serious minded war poet genius! In fact he said he regretted that he had to be “the poet of sorrows” and shows a sly humour in his letters. Even though he did not have many lines to say I felt we could have seen a bit more complexity in his characterisation. I somehow did not see either Owen or Sassoon dancing the tango but this could have been showing how the more superficial world of the Twenties was breaking in on the serious intensity of poetry. I found that, when I looked at the film as a whole, the images of Tennant, Novello, Glen Byam Shaw, etc, faded, but the relationship between Sassoon and Owen at Craiglockhart seemed more significant. I wondered why this should be and decided it was because Sassoon and Owen were both poets linked by the mysterious art and craft of poetry. They had so much more in common than Sassoon had with any of the more superficial young men he met. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though I found the acting very good I felt there were some things in this carefully constructed world that didn’t work. In regard to the acting, though Peter Capaldi is a very good actor, the fact of him being welded onto Jack Lowden as an older self didn’t work for me. The change seemed too sudden and I never felt he was really “in” the part. The situation was not helped by him doing a lot of contemplating the past and not doing much talking. Also, I noticed towards the end of the film there was a strange inclination to see George Sassoon and his father enacting a sort of modern domestic drama of the wayward son who fights his father but is kind to him in the end! It is possible of course that Terence Davies wanted to show the strange movements of history whereby the cosy Victorian world gave way to terrible warfare, then there was an odd pause where people floated around being witty, which eventually gave way to another war. Later there was a collapse into domesticity ending in small living rooms where it seemed people lived on memories.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jack Lowden himself gave a very solid performance. Though he was silent for much of the time, his silences set against the lively behaviour of the other young men in his circle suggests he cannot get rid of the shadows of war. It is suggested that at least one of the young men, Ivor Novello, was entertaining the troops with his songs rather than fighting in the war. Lowden’s silences made us speculate on how he might be thinking of the gulf between him and them and the fact that he must turn to them because all his other friends, including Wilfred Owen, are dead. Near the end of the film we see Sassoon break down completely. He is sitting alone on a seat in the park on a cold night. He appears as the older Sassoon played by Peter Capaldi but as the scene progresses he reverts to the young Sassoon. This seems to stress how he can never escape from his young self fighting the war. Lowden, with great sensitivity, gradually gives way to tears, and the gasping pauses in this outpouring of emotion seem to indicate the way the full horror of the war is becoming clear to him. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though very successful generally in his part I feel Lowden was possibly less successful in conveying a variety of emotions. His meeting with Hester Gatty when she is sketching near the churchyard (another reference to those dead in the war?) and his more intimate scenes with her were rather embarrassing. You could say that the director wanted to show the difficulties he had with women but the dialogue seemed steeped in cliché and was laughable in parts. In fact other bits of the screenplay were a problem. I think the real difficulty might have been the fact that there was not much complexity shown in most of the characters including Sassoon. Though Lowden was very good at expressing suppressed emotion, emotional turmoil and hidden feelings, we did not see any other layers of Sassoon’s personality. I would blame the dialogue for this, not the actor. Of course I could be wrong: Terence Davies could have wanted to leave out complexity of character deliberately so that he could create a kind of dream image of this interlude between the wars where people seemed to move in a slow dance round Sassoon and each other, dropping flat keys, saying goodbyes, etc, against a background of muted Art Deco colours. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I actually saw the film twice, once at FACT in Liverpool and once at HOME in Manchester. The audiences in both cases were larger than I thought they would be. All in all, I enjoyed it in spite of some criticisms. I’ve found myself thinking about it quite a lot since and I feel increasingly that Terence Davies was trying to make a new kind of film which was not like the old conventional format of long dialogue and dramatic situations. Rather it was like an Impressionist painting where the background of recent war was sketched in, important things like Sassoon and Owen at Craiglockhart appeared in brighter colours, and the whole thing seemed like a slow movement across time. This inter-war period of Sassoon’s life left Sassoon thinking about his sexuality, mourning dead friends and wondering how his writing would develop; in other words it was a strange lull. Terence Davies drew in the worlds of design, photography and the background of history with its periods of turmoil and peace.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-12379809429620347312022-05-29T05:40:00.001-07:002022-05-29T05:40:26.525-07:00Port Lympne - Philip Sassoon’s Legacy<p><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Post by Irene McCready</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Afternoon tea at Port Lympne, Philip Sassoon’s constituency home, seemed to be the perfect birthday treat for one who is an avid follower of the poet Siegfried and the rest of the Sassoon clan. I had been looking forward to this visit for over a year and have to say that the experience was well worth the wait. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Philip Sassoon (1888-1939), a cousin of Siegfried, was constituency MP for Folkestone and Hythe from 1913 until his death. On his election to this, his father’s former seat, he set about building this lovely house in a choice location on the Romney Marshes in Kent. Since he was a fabulously wealthy man, money was no barrier to the construction of this remarkable mansion; consequently, it still holds some of the character of its charismatic builder. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Today, Philip Sassoon is no more than a footnote in history (in fact there are more references to his cousin Siegfried in most history books covering this period), but in his day, he was quite an influential man, serving both General Haig and then Prime Minister David Lloyd George in very quick succession. For many years he was Under Secretary for Air and even had an Air Force Squadron based on his Lympne estate. But his main legacy will be his contribution to the arts, and more pertinently, the building and creation of two very fine houses, Trent Park in Middlesex and Port Lympne.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Built in a Dutch Colonial style by architect Herbert Baker, it is constructed from luscious, rose-coloured brick (recycled from elsewhere) and stands on a small hill overlooking the Marshes; on a clear day there is a view of the English Channel beyond. Originally, over 100 rooms, it now boasts only eight hotel suites, plus dining and conference facilities. The atmosphere and tone of the mansion very much reflects the interests of the last owner, gaming entrepreneur and zoo keeper John Aspinall (of Lord Lucan fame). He created a wildlife park in the 1970s which remains a very popular attraction. Few of Sir Philip’s touches are still in existence, but what survives is simultaneously vibrant and poignant.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>On the day of our visit my companion and I were fortunate to meet another Philip Sassoon buff whose precise role, and indeed name, I failed to establish, but he claimed to be both staff and volunteer. He was eager to show us the vestibule as we had spoken of Rex Whistler in our initial discussion. I was not disappointed. It contained the original silk ceiling hanging and the mural, painted in an Arcadian style, depicting the life of Philip, seeming as fresh as the day it was completed. It was exciting to note that Siegfried also saw this painted, when he was an invited guest for the first and only time shortly before his marriage to Hester. Rex was then painting the finishing touches. He was paid £800 for the job, which, according to our guide, Rex thought was too little for the amount of work involved. But I suspect he did not factor-in all those days and weeks enjoying the good food, excellent wine and the general opulence of life at Port Lympne.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>What was formerly the dinning room, now the lounge and bar, was next on our agenda. It is very simply furnished with colonial-style cane armchairs and a large rug to highlight the beautiful parquet floor. This room is the home of the Glyn Philpot frieze which depicts spear- and shield-brandishing African warriors. Apparently, one guest had complained about the frieze, claiming that it was racist and, in truth, I could see the point being made, but, as the painting is part of the Grade 2 listing, little can be done to change it.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Moorish terrace is situated on a half-landing on the main staircase. Open to the sky, it is made of exquisite pink marble and looks straight out of a Tale of the Arabian Nights, which I can imagine was the effect that Philip Sassoon was trying to create all those years ago. The hotel have taken care to decorate it with climbers and other exotic pot plants which enhance the beauty of the architecture.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Other rooms on the ground floor were dedicated to a conference/marriage suite, and furnished in a modern style. Apart from the casement windows, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">there is little evidence to denote the period of the house. In the largest room there is an oversized monkey and palm tree painted on one wall.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The “Jungle Book” approach was carried forward to the salon where afternoon tea was served. The ceiling and every scrap of wall was dedicated to this theme of wildlife. Lions, tigers, monkeys; all were present, watching us take tea, and, peering through abundant foliage, was the head of John Aspinall, the founder of the wildlife park.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The true irony of the room is the fact that beneath all of that garish fresco lies an authentic Philip Sassoon contribution to the architecture. There were two huge windows letting in the gorgeous afternoon light and over each was a canopy of intricate, filigree plaster work. But unfortunately, the subtlety of this “Sultan’s Palace” effect has been totally subsumed by the greenery.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Only by picking our way though the worn and broken York stone paving were we able to admire the garden (I felt that these could have been sympathetically restored to ensure the safety of the guests). Sitting in the sun, the vista over the Romney Marshes was stunning, but alas, no French coastline was visible. The enjoyment of a fantasy of Siegfried musing in the same spot, smoking his pipe, was interrupted by the reappearance of our guide who had promised us a visit to the library.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The tiny, octagonal library with its oak panels and bookshelves seemed to be the only place where Philip Sassoon was acknowledged; for there at the door, on a stand, was a photograph of him with the Heads of State participating in the peace conference of 1919. This had been hailed as a great success on a social level but achieved very little towards the peace process. This room was termed the small library in its heyday - as there was a much larger one elsewhere - where guests could experience a quiet break. This practice continues today.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The visit ended with a final talk about the famous people who had enjoyed the luxurious surroundings of Port Lympne and the generosity of its owner. Some of the suites are named after these guests. Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin and of course Rex Whistler. These names help keep alive Philip’s memory. But it is John Aspinall, who made his fortune via the gaming tables and other, less-savoury ventures, who emerges the winner in the popularity stakes. His introduction of a game park was a brilliant idea; a real money spinner but also enjoyed by serious conservationists and the general public alike. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-1f2d2c19-7fff-c26e-2462-da35503bd8e0"><br /></span>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-24680108969899057372022-05-23T07:26:00.002-07:002022-05-23T07:26:57.650-07:00Larkin and his friends<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <span> This post may be taken as yet another reminder that all members of literary societies affiliated to the Alliance of Literary Societies are able and welcome to attend the annual conference of that august body. We have been missing this very enjoyable event, amongst others, for the past two summers. The Walmsley Society were heartbroken when they were unable to host it, as planned, in 2020, and we feel for them. But it's back now.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> This year's conference was hosted by the Philip Larkin Society, in Hull where Larkin worked for many years as the University Librarian. In fact, much of the appearance of the present-day library building, known as the Brynmor Jones Library, is due to his efforts. It is named after the eminent scientist Sir Brynmor Jones, who at the time was Vice-Chancellor of Hull University. Jones, a Welshman, cannot really be counted among Larkin's friends, as the two apparently had a somewhat difficult relationship. <br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgta7XfQ-49qF9Ecyb8_xex2U5ZlNrRwsQNaKgXKasYLduonyuIGn2qWZZTAwjpIN-y0daYgAicv9Ryw2c9a0yycp3-Op7m7efOoWoQpf9sVR4opkxq3hiIFGncUZp5q9qF5y7FFt9gdYvuN3isNJfwcuzquQ2z3xCB3IAxcz1M9W0RFVODgWGlIoa/s4160/IMG_20220521_163252419.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgta7XfQ-49qF9Ecyb8_xex2U5ZlNrRwsQNaKgXKasYLduonyuIGn2qWZZTAwjpIN-y0daYgAicv9Ryw2c9a0yycp3-Op7m7efOoWoQpf9sVR4opkxq3hiIFGncUZp5q9qF5y7FFt9gdYvuN3isNJfwcuzquQ2z3xCB3IAxcz1M9W0RFVODgWGlIoa/w397-h298/IMG_20220521_163252419.jpg" width="397" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><span> </span><span> The idea that Larkin was an abrasive character is, however, dispelled by conversations with those who knew him in person. Phil Bacon, a former Sociology lecturer at Hull and long-time member of the Larkin Society, confirms that he was "a really nice chap". Ann Thwaite, an old and valued friend of the SSF whose late husband, Anthony, was Larkin's literary executor, agrees. The Thwaites first met Larkin in the 1950s, when he was just making his name as a poet. When we paused during our walking tour of Hull to look at a joke shop in the arcade (above right), Ann commented: "That's just the kind of place Philip would have loved!"</span></span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><span><span> </span><span> Another of Larkin's friends was the novelist J. I. M. Stewart, who, although 16 years Larkin's senior, outlived him, and talks in his autobiography about the memorial service he attended in 1986. Stewart had, 58 years earlier, attended Thomas Hardy's funeral at Westminster Abbey (though he could no longer remember how he had procured a ticket). Stewart presumably knew Larkin as a result of his time as an academic at Queen's University, Belfast, where Larkin worked before coming to Hull. Not long before Larkin died, he had written to Stewart expressing "wonder" at the great span of time that fell within Stewart's memory. Larkin died, still employed at Hull (where his office is preserved much as it looked at the time of his death), at the age of 63. Stewart lived to be 88. </span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><span><span><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>The Larkin Society was founded in 1995, and is currently celebrating the poet's centenary. You can find out more from their website: </span></span></span></span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">https://philiplarkin.com/</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><span><br /></span><br /></span></span></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-3122029986852999142022-03-24T08:49:00.001-07:002022-03-24T08:49:24.894-07:00The courage of Marc Bloch<p style="text-align: justify;"> <span> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">As a student of medieval French during the 1970s, I was obliged to read one of the standard works on French medieval history, <i style="background-color: white;">La Société Féodale</i> by Marc Bloch. It was a massive tome, already nearly forty years old, and although I admired Bloch's scholarship, I cannot say that I actively enjoyed reading it. I knew nothing of Mr Bloch and made no attempt to find out. There was no Google to make it easy to discover his biographical details, and in any case I had no reason to want to know them.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> Born in 1886, only a couple of months before Siegfried Sassoon, Marc Bloch came from a middle-class family and, like Sassoon, was of Jewish ancestry. There the resemblance appears to end. Bloch's father was a historian and teacher, whom Marc would later emulate. His academic prowess showed itself at an early age, when Sassoon was still struggling to keep up with his lessons at Marlborough, and after national service, Marc was researching in early French history and was appointed a Fellow of the Fondation Dosne-Thiers in Paris.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span>Then came the war. Like others, Marc Bloch expected it to last a short time. He soon distinguished himself with acts of somewhat foolhardy bravery, and actively enjoyed his first few months of service. As</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> with Sassoon, it was the first time he had really mixed with working-class men, and he soon came to appreciate their qualities. He also quickly developed a dislike for some of the senior officers. Having no inclination towards poetry, he made it his business to record the events of the war impartially, as he would do again when the Second World War came along. He found the French army woefully unprepared from the outset, and he suffered the same personal losses as his British counterparts, not to mention the psychological after-effects of combat: "Ever since the Argonne in 1914, the buzzing sound of bullets has been stamped on the grey matter of my brain," he wrote.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span>Thankfully, Bloch survived that first war, and was able to return to academia. Despite his age and failing health, he remained in the military reserve, and found himself called up at the start of the Second World War, but felt bored rather than patriotic. Once again critical of the generals, he was eventually obliged to move to Vichy-controlled territory, where his Jewish blood put him almost equally at risk. Sending his family - a wife and six children - to safety, he joined the Resistance in Lyon in 1942. His administrative skills, learned in the field of education, led to his becoming a regional organiser. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> Bloch's unassuming appearance could not protect him indefinitely. In 1944, aged 57, he was discovered in possession of a radio transmitter, and he was captured and tortured. Shortly after the Normandy landings, he was shot by a firing squad, along with a number of other prisoners.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> Bloch had requested that his epitaph read "Dilexi veritatem" ("I have loved the truth"), a sentiment of which Siegfried Sassoon would have wholeheartedly approved. </span>His unfinished book,<i> L'<span style="background-color: white; color: #5f6368; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">É</span>trange D<span style="background-color: white; color: #5f6368; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">é</span>fa</i></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>ite (Strange Defeat)</i>, published posthumously, was concerned with the failure of the French government to prevent the country's fall in 1940. Looking back on the First World War, he wrote:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; text-align: start;"><i>"...After four years not only of fighting but of mental laziness, we were only too anxious to get back to our proper employments...That is our excuse. But I have long ceased to believe that it can wash us clean of guilt."</i></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span> </span><span face="sans-serif"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"><b> </b></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span face="sans-serif"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"><b><span> </span><br /></b></span></span></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-70697986078945171312021-11-27T05:02:00.000-08:002021-11-27T05:02:14.181-08:00The "Pen-Prostituter" looks forward to Christmas 1921<p style="text-align: justify;"> <span> </span>I am afraid the title of this post is somewhat misleading, in two senses. Siegfried Sassoon, in his diary for 21 November 1921, expressed his avowed intention of NOT becoming a "pen-prostituter", even though his financial resources were somewhat stretched. Secondly, though his concern with money may have been occasioned partly by the knowledge that Christmas was approaching, he does not appear to have been looking forward to it in any way. At the end of his entry for 1 December, he wrote, "I wish I could take life less heavily. Robbie Ross always said I was 'rather morbid'. No doubt he was right."</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> In his November diary, Sassoon describes the various financial demands on him. Already in debt, he is determined to find money to help Harold Owen, Wilfred's younger brother, to study art in London. He had already tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade another friend, Arnold Bennett, to buy one of Harold's watercolours. Some readers may have got the impression that Sassoon had brushed aside his memories of Owen after the war, but here he says, "I keep thinking of Wilfred." Clearly he felt an obligation to his late friend's family, even if he tended to avoid direct contact with them.</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span> Other individuals who were a financial drain on Sassoon's limited resources included Gabriel Atkin, the young artist who had been his first lover and was now receiving an "allowance" from him. Siegfried's brother Michael had borrowed money which Siegfried was not expecting to get back, and his chestnut mare was costing him a lot to maintain. He wanted to sell her, but the horse was not in a fit condition for him to ride her himself, let alone sell her. He was therefore trying to think of other ways of raising money, even considering the sale of some of his precious books and the portrait that had been painted by Glyn Philpot. The one thing he drew the line at was writing articles for magazines to supplement his income. Sassoon found it almost impossible to write to order.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span><span> In this state of mind, it is hardly surprising that Sassoon had fallen out with many of his friends. The chief thorn in his side was Osbert Sitwell, whose biting satires had targeted some of Siegfried's closest friends, including the innocuous Edmund Blunden. Other friends sapped his energy. Harold Laski, whom he liked, gave him a "restless satisfaction", whilst Frank "Toronto" Prewett, whom he also liked, could "only be taken in occasional doses". Perhaps the most pernicious influence was Walter Turner, with whom he shared the Tufton Street house. Turner was having an affair, and Siegfried saw him with the woman in question at a concert on 1 December, which upset him since he was fond of Turner's wife Delphine - unlike Robert Graves's wife Nancy, whom he listed as one of the main reasons for his estrangement from his old wartime comrade.</span><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> Sassoon was, of course, still suffering from depression, which perhaps we would now call PTSD. If anyone ever had a reason for feeling like this, it was him, but perhaps many of his other friends, like Graves and Blunden, had similar problems. Robert Ross perhaps did not take this into account when calling him "morbid". How could a man who had so recently been close to death and lost so many who were dear to him be otherwise? His mentor, W H R Rivers, whom he had seen in November, was someone on whom he depended to help him escape from the gloom. He would stay with Rivers in Cambridge in February 1922. But by June, Rivers was dead, having collapsed with a strangulated hernia in his rooms at St John's College. Curiously, in his diary for 6 June, the day he received the news, Sassoon wrote that Rivers had done him a good turn: "He has awakened in me a passionate consciousness of the significance of life." Perhaps it is easier to feel like that in June than it is in December. </span><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span><span> </span><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span><br /></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-72205418985028927072021-08-07T05:58:00.004-07:002021-08-11T10:11:29.877-07:00Mr Hardy, the Dearmer family, and Lord Derby<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>The first and only time I met the late Robert Hardy, our briefest of conversations turned on a poet who had celebrated his 100th birthday in 1993. Mr Hardy had been present at the attendant celebration and happened to be talking about it just as I came into the room. Geoffrey Dearmer had been the last surviving First World War poet "proper", which immediately aroused my interest.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span>Not many people, even those who are interested in the literature of the First World War, seem to have heard of Geoffrey Dearmer. Perhaps living to be 103 was a disadvantage in terms of notoriety. I've noticed over the years how those who died young (Burns, Keats, Shelley, Owen, to name but a few) tend to eclipse their longer-lived contemporaries, largely because there isn't time for the public to become bored with them and their work. Sassoon and Graves both produced enough quality work in middle age to continue to be revered in the long term, even though they may not have received much attention in the last couple of decades of their lives.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span> </span>Dearmer is not generally considered to have been in the Sassoon or Graves class as a poet, or indeed a rival to Wilfred Owen, who was just three days his senior. His best-known poem, "The Turkish Trench-Dog", is a curious precursor of Rosenberg's more famous queer sardonic rat from "Break of Day in the Trenches". But Dearmer had more in common with Sassoon than is immediately obvious. </span>On 6 October 1915, Geoffrey Dearmer's younger brother, Christopher, died of wounds on board the troop ship <i>Gloucester Castle</i>, of wounds incurred at Suvla Bay. On 1 November 1915, Siegfried Sassoon's younger brother, Hamo, died of wounds on board the troop ship <i>Kildonan Castle</i>, of wounds incurred at Suvla Bay. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> Geoffrey Dearmer, unlike his more famous contemporary Sassoon, never wanted to go to war. His father was a clergyman, his mother an artist, writer and committed pacifist. Perhaps Geoffrey would have chosen to be a conscientious objector were it not for the fact that both parents volunteered to serve - the Rev Percy Dearmer as a chaplain and Mabel as a nursing orderly. Their sons followed their lead, believing that they should "do their bit" regardless of their personal preferences. Tragedy came soon after, with Mabel Dearmer developing enteric fever while nursing in Serbia and dying of pneumonia in July 1915, shortly after returning home. When her younger son also died, it must have been a serious blow to Geoffrey's father, and will have had a lasting impact on Geoffrey himself.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> From a recent article in the Western Front Association's <i>Stand To!</i> magazine I learned that the military files of certain individuals were preserved for posterity in the National Archives because of their activities in civilian life. Sassoon was apparently not one of these, but Robert Graves was, and so was Geoffrey Dearmer. The records contained in the latter's file reveal what happened next. Stephen Gwynn, an Irish Nationalist MP who served as a captain in the British Army and was a friend of Mabel's, wrote to the infamous Lord Derby in 1917 to appeal for Geoffrey, who was at that time in the Army Service Corps, to be kept out of the front line, in deference to a "very sensitive nature" that made him unsuited for the infantry. Three weeks later, Geoffrey was ordered back to the UK.</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"> Gwynn had commented that the young man was "more likely to become a great poet than any young writer of his day". Perhaps Dearmer did not quite achieve that, but he certainly lived a long and interesting life, going on to work for the Lord Chamberlain's Office as an "Examiner of Plays", responsible for upholding standards in the theatre, and later worked for the BBC, where he had a hand in the radio series, <i>Children's Hour</i>, of which many of you will still have happy memories. <span face="sans-serif"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"><b><i> </i></b></span></span></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-19029021256925014212021-06-15T02:05:00.002-07:002021-06-15T02:05:29.920-07:00The War Poets by rail<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"> <span> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">The colourfully-dressed Michael Portillo seems to have hit the jackpot with his latest series of <i>Great British Railway Journeys</i>. His journey through North Wales, broadcast on BBC2 in May (but recorded in the depths of lockdown), has brought him well and truly into First World War literary territory. To top it all, one of his guides en route was none other than Phil Carradice, a founder member and former committee member of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship. Phil is a seasoned broadcaster, is used to meeting celebrities and has become familiar with some of their quirks. Apparently, after they finished their discussion of coal mining at the site of the former Gresford Colliery, where 266 men lost their lives in 1934, Mr Portillo turned to Phil and said, presumably in jest, "Are you a f***ing socialist?" - to which Phil replied "Yes, I f***ing am!" (That's the way he tells it, anyway.)</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span><span style="font-family: times;"> Portillo is nevertheless an engaging companion in these episodes, and another friend of the SSF who spoke to him was Martin Gething of the T E Lawrence Society. Lawrence was, more by luck than judgement, born in Tremadog in North Wales, and his birthplace, Gorphwysfa, now masquerading under an English name, still stands. His parents had taken refuge there after his father, minor Irish nobility, had run off with Lawrence's mother, his children's governess.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> The rail journey continued further south - not easy, since kind Dr Beeching removed any danger of a direct rail connection between North and South Wales in the 1960s. (He would have closed more lines if it hadn't been for the fact that some of them ran through marginal constituencies.) Mr Portillo somehow reached Harlech and Aberystwyth, but did not mention the local literary connections. This did not prevent the SSF Facebook group holding a fascinating discussion on the things he may have missed.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span><span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span>At Harlech, a 1914 resident might have been aware of Alfred Perceval Graves, an Irish writer who kept a second home there, to which he eventually retired. In 1902, when</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: times;"> </span><span style="font-family: times;">the National Eisteddfod took place at Bangor, </span><span style="font-family: times;">he even managed to get himself elected to the Gorsedd of Bards, an honour highly prized within Wales. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>Since he took an interest in the Welsh language, Alfred Graves might have begun to notice a young man from Trawsfynydd, one Ellis Humphrey Evans, who was winning chairs for his poetry in local eisteddfodau; he specialised in the <i>awdl</i>, a traditional form of poetry that abides by strict rules of metre. When, in 1917, using the pen name "Hedd Wyn" ("white peace"), Evans entered the big one - the National Eisteddfod of Wales - and won, the victory was bitter-sweet because he had been killed in action just a few days earlier near Ypres, and the chair which would have been his prize was draped in black.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Phil Carradice tells how he went to Hedd Wyn's cottage (now open to the public) many years ago, while researching a novel, and met the poet's nephew, Gerald Williams, who welcomed him in, adding plaintively, "You will look after me, won't you?" Mr Williams, who had been custodian of the house for more than sixty years, died just a few days ago, <i>after</i> I had begun writing this post. Legends about Hedd Wyn continue abound, one of which seems to have arisen from Gillian Clarke's 2013 poem, "Eisteddfod of the Black Chair" - the story that Robert Graves met Evans once, while walking in the hills. Possible, but unverified.</span><br /></span></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-40746894020588522312021-04-28T07:48:00.000-07:002021-04-28T07:48:00.334-07:00Tribute: Anthony Thwaite<p style="text-align: justify;"> Anthony Thwaite, who died in April 2021 at the age of 90, was an old friend of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship. Early in our history, we held a conference - perhaps a little ambitiously - at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The speakers included Jean Moorcroft Wilson and Neil Brand. Also generously giving their time to us were Anthony Thwaite and his wife Ann, who read selections from the work of Siegfried Sassoon.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> Dr Ann Thwaite is a distinguished writer, best known for her biographies, who had at one time been selected by Rupert Hart-Davis as his preferred candidate to produce an official life of Siegfried Sassoon. For various reasons, this never came to pass; however, Ann remained a Sassoon "fan", and spoke to us again at our conference in Cambridge in 2008, where she was accompanied for the weekend by her husband Anthony, although on this occasion he remained a mere audience member. </span><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span> Anthony Thwaite had preceded his wife into print, but theirs was very much a partnership of equals, and he was good enough to show no displeasure when, on first meeting, I praised Ann's achievements whilst revealing that I had never heard of him or his poetry. Later I would learn that, in addition to his own illustrious literary career, he was Philip Larkin's literary executor and had played a major role in editing Larkin's work and making it more widely available.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> Born in Chester, Anthony spent the Second World War in the United States with relatives, returning to do his National Service in Libya, which instilled in him a lifelong interest in archaeology. At Oxford, he edited the university magazine <i>Isis</i>, and his poems were soon being published in national magazines. After marrying Ann in the mid 1950s, he travelled with her to Japan, where, like Sassoon's friend Edmund Blunden, he taught at a university. His literary career expanded to include editing and criticism, and he was in demand throughout the world as a reader of his own work and a commentator on that of others.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> On one memorable occasion, Anthony and Ann performed a joint reading of the letters of Philip Larkin and Barbara Pym at her former Oxford college, St Hilda's. In 1989, Anthony edited the letters for radio, and readings have since been performed at the Oxford Literary Festival and many other occasions, by a variety of well-known actors and actresses. He also edited Larkin's letters to Monica Jones and introduced these on Radio 4. Like Larkin, he was at one time Chair of the Booker Prize judges' panel. Like Sassoon, he worked as a literary editor, in his case of <i>The Listener</i> and the <i>New Statesman</i>. </p><p style="text-align: left;"> The Guardian described Anthony Thwaite as "a mover and shaker in postwar English literary life".<span style="color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, Guardian Text Egyptian Web, Georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;"> </span></span></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-55138951640009331582021-02-24T04:30:00.000-08:002021-02-24T04:30:36.318-08:00Memory - poetry analysis by Meg Crane<p> <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Memory</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-6f147e0d-7fff-d25a-4034-e9204c87aff4"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I was young my heart and head were light,</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I was gay and feckless as a colt</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Out in the fields, with morning in the may,</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Across the carolling meadows into June.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Burning my dreams away beside the fire:</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For death has made me wise and bitter and strong;</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I am rich in all that I have lost.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">O starshine on the fields of long-ago,</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bring me the darkness and the nightingale;</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home,</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and silence; and the faces of my friends.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 2.25pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Crai</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In February 1918, with the Craiglockhart interlude behind him, Sassoon was back on ‘active service’ – but almost as far away from the fighting as it was possible to be and still remain in Europe. The First</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Battalion of the Royal Welsh</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Fusiliers had been ordered to Limerick, in the south-west of Ireland. In theory they were a garrison force: only twenty months had elapsed since the Easter Rising of 1916, and in less than another year the Irish War of Independence would break out – but in February 1918 everything seems to have been quiet and still. Sassoon, waiting to know where he would be sent next, used the time to compose and revise. Three poems, linked by theme and imagery, date from this period: 'Together', 'Idyll' and 'Memory'. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'Together' is the concluding poem in </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Counterattack </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(1918); the other two appear in </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Picture Show </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(1919). ‘Together’ and ‘Idyll’ – both of them elegies for Sassoon’s hunting-field friend Gordon Harbord, killed in August 1917 during the Third Battle of Ypres – have been discussed previously in this blog (see</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://sassoonfellowship.blogspot.com/2016/02/together.html/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://sassoonfellowship.blogspot.com/2016/02/together.html/</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Both poems embody the idea that the dead continue to live on, in some zone between actuality and imagination. This is a recurring theme with Sassoon, who in this way at various times brings back to life other loved figures - his brother Hamo, David Thomas, Marcus Goodall. These visitations are sometimes consoling ('Falling Asleep'), sometimes the opposite - in 'Sick Leave' the still-living dead come back to reproach him.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'Idyll' and 'Together' – in spite of the fact that they were published in different collections – form a diptych: 'Idyll' is a morning and summer poem; 'Together' an evening and autumn poem. 'Idyll' is entirely consolatory – the reunion with the dead one is assured, and will resolve all grief. 'Together' is more ambivalent: the narrator looks ahead to a return to his old life on the hunting field, and predicts that he will forget his friend during the daytime, but will remember him, and re-encounter him, as evening falls – and will then lose him again 'at the stable door'. As I was writing this, it occurred to me for the first time that SS may have been reciprocally influenced by Wilfred Owen's 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', in which remembrance of the dead has been absorbed into the perpetual cycle of morning and evening, day and night. At Craiglockhart, Sassoon had given Owen generous and perceptive advice in the drafting of that poem, which deals, not with the physical return of the dead, but with their physical commemoration, which prolongs the sense of their physical existence.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of these, and of some other characteristic Sassoon themes, play their part in 'Memory'. The imagery of birds, flowers and music recurs, as do the words 'dream' and 'morning'. However, in some ways 'Memory' is the reverse of 'Idyll'. One striking difference is the way in which the narrator of 'Memory' perceives and presents himself. In 'Idyll' and 'Together', the narrator seems to be a young man, prematurely cut off from his friends and companions, but sure that he will find them again in some form. In 'Memory' he seems to be presenting himself as an old man, a survivor with no future, only a past. He begs that past to return, but the poem brings no certainty that it will do so.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I first encountered this poem, I assumed it had been written many years after the end of the war, so it is startling to discover that it dates only from February 1918, when Sassoon was still no more than thirty-one. The narrator begins with 'When I was young …', but counters this in the second stanza with 'But now …', implying that old age has set in. The remembered young man of stanza 1 is associated with morning, springtime and open spaces – 'meadows' and (another of Sassoon's favourite words) 'weald'.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The season here is spring passing into summer, and the narrator is completely at one with his natural surroundings. The past is relentlessly romanticised: by contrast, in the early poem 'Before Day' (1908) the very young Sassoon had used the same landscape to convey a distinct sense of melancholy and solitude. The only possible note of melancholy in stanza 1 of 'Memory', however, is the transition from 'may' (the blossom as well as the month) in l.3 to 'hawthorn' in l.7. Hawthorn in country superstition has associations of grief – legend has it that Christ's cross was made of hawthorn wood, and Sassoon himself references this tradition in another, earlier poem, 'Morning Glory'. But the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">volta,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or transition point, between the two stanzas is a line expressing joy and energy, and a sense of complete oneness with Nature – 'across the carolling meadows into June'. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The second stanza begins with a shift of tone and time: 'But now…'. In my January contribution to this blog I mentioned Sassoon's repeated use of the imagery of loads and burdens (including the burden of Christ's cross), and we find this image once again here: 'But now my heart is </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">heavy-laden'. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sense of being </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">weighed down</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is reinforced by the image of the once-active poet </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sitting </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in front of the fire, like an old man. At Limerick in the daytime, Sassoon hunted, and pursued an apparently cheerful social life, not unlike the horsey life he had led in Kent before the War. This is the other side of the picture: the solitary figure once the sun has gone down. A choice of words it is easy to overlook is found in l.2 of the second stanza. The narrator is not </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dreaming</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> his dreams, or </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reliving</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> his dreams, as an old man might be expected to do: he is 'burning [them] away' – which is the image that Hamlet's father uses for the purging of his sins. So the fire in Sassoon's poem is not comforting or sleep-inducing, but purgatorial. The narrator is proud, even possessive, of his sorrow - 'I am rich in all that I have lost'. He is also at least half-proud of the way in which he has shed his 'gay and feckless' young self: 'death has made me wise and bitter and strong'. Of those three adjectives, only 'bitter' is ambivalent – if the poet means what he says, then to have been made 'wise' and 'strong' is to have emerged wounded but victorious. If he is also 'bitter', then he is armed, but has lost something too.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -30.65pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So perhaps he only half-means it – or to be </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wise and bitter and strong</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is after all no compensation for 'all that I have lost'. The poem ends on a passionate, impossible wish: for the stars to return in their courses, bringing back 'the fields of long-ago', the birdsong, the lost 'wealds' … and, not music, as in 'Idyll', but 'silence; and the faces of my friends'. Hamlet has already reared his head here: perhaps Sassoon echoes Hamlet's self-epitaph: 'the rest is silence'. And yet, even after that wish for dignity and peace, comes the atavistic, 'hopeless longing to regain'</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> what is lost – and this time we believe it is lost – 'the faces of my friends'.</span></p><div><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-65452488734317488432021-02-13T05:29:00.001-08:002021-02-13T05:29:41.457-08:00As seen on screen<p style="text-align: justify;">Things are not getting any easier for literary societies in lockdown, but at least we are becoming wiser to the possibilities of electronic communication. We've simply had to.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"> There is a lot to be said for making our activities available online. Many members, even those of an advanced age, have begun using tools like Zoom and Facebook in a way they would never have dreamed of attempting a year ago. Much as we may prefer the written word to a screen adaptation, the appetite for recorded and/or streamed content is increasing almost daily. Perhaps you, too, have found yourself unable to attend an interesting live seminar on your computer because you were already booked for another live seminar at the same time. With luck, you will have been able to access a recording of the one you missed.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> Many societies have been slow to adapt to "new technology" in the twenty or thirty years it's been available. I've come across many speakers at local meetings who prefer slide projectors to Powerpoint and I've even seen some, in recent years, struggling with OHP projectors, which - let's face it - were never very user-friendly even when there was no alternative. Sometimes this is just a practical matter: buying new electronic equipment costs money.</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span> It doesn't necessarily work, anyway. This blog, for example, has been in existence for about eight years, and in that time the readership has shrunk rather than grown. The same goes for our Facebook group - regularly used and contributed to by many people, but only around a quarter of those who are members of the group (many of whom are not actually members of the Sassoon Fellowship) ever actually look at the posts, and still fewer join in the discussions. Hence we have held back from attempting to expand into other areas such as Twitter and Instagram; it's not economical of effort.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span> Nevertheless, the cancellation of so many live events has led to the societies I'm involved with having been obliged to hold AGMs and other events online, and most of us got off to a shaky start. Even joining a Zoom meeting requires a certain amount of skill, let alone hosting one, as I've been forced to do many times now. For me, however, the revelation has been YouTube. Not that I was unfamiliar with YouTube before last February. I've been using it for years to look for songs I couldn't remember, music I couldn't listen to because I don't have a working CD player in the house, ancient TV programmes that I thought I would never see again, and so on.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span><span> The YouTube landscape has also changed in the past year, however, and for a while even the owners of YouTube could not cope with the sudden upturn in demand. Until the autumn, I didn't even know that you could livestream a Zoom meeting straight to YouTube to enable you to reach a bigger audience without having to pay extra for a Zoom upgrade; it was only when I saw an academic institution doing it that I realised. In September, thanks to my daughter who already know much (but not all) of this, I sat in a small bedroom surrounded by microphones and computers and hosted the AGM of the Barbara Pym Society, followed by a one hour "mini-conference", attended by delegates from all over Europe and the United States as well as the UK. (See my earlier post on this subject.) In doing so, I learned a lot about what NOT to do, as well as what worked well. </span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span><span> From there it was a short hop to participating in the "lockdown reading" of a classic novel, and this has spurred on the Sassoon Fellowship to attempt comparable feats, although we are a long way from fulfilling our ambitions yet. We have, however, uploaded two recorded interviews to our new YouTube "channel" (see </span></span></span><span style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1wV-qorFfCLDaWhmIK6Adw/videos">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1wV-qorFfCLDaWhmIK6Adw/videos</a> ) for the benefit of our members and others who are interested in Sassoon and his work. The Wilfred Owen Association has held live seminars on individual poems by Owen. Even the small local history society of which I'm a member has managed to hold regular monthly meetings on Zoom.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span> One of the most interesting things about this trend is that we are attracting a whole new audience. Elderly and disabled people who always found it a chore to attend meetings in person are catching on quickly. Others who were unable to attend events because of transport difficulties, cost, or simply the time involved, are able to access us on the small screen and sometimes to participate actively. Don't forget, when you are viewing or joining in, that there may be substantial effort involved in setting up these events and the organisers (although we often feel more like the "disorganised") may not be able to keep it up indefinitely. But for the time being, enjoy them, appreciate them, and - best of all - offer constructive feedback. At the time of writing, no one really knows what the future has in store.</span><br /></span></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-18911599739064988152021-01-19T07:42:00.003-08:002021-01-19T07:42:35.999-08:00When Biggles met Lawrence of Arabia<p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span> </span>I make no apology for another post that begins with an episode from the life of Siegfried Sassoon's beloved and extraordinary friend, T E Lawrence, "Eternal T.E." as Sassoon christened him in a poem written after Lawrence's death. Lawrence remains a legendary figure, and the more one learns about him, the most astonished one is.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span> After</span> the war and the failure of his diplomatic efforts to procure a satisfactory outcome to the troubles of the Middle East, exacerbated as they were by British and French imperial ambitions, Lawrence saw nothing for it but to retreat from the world, and his method of doing so was not something most people would even have considered. His career as a guerrilla fighter, living the daily life of a Bedouin with its attendant disadvantages and flirting with danger at every opportunity, show that he was not afraid of physical discomfort; indeed, he seems to have relished it. Nevertheless, he was unprepared for life as a newly-recruited serviceman in the RAF.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span> Lawrence chose this path hoping for anonymity, but used the pretext of wanting to write a book about the RAF to convince senior commanders of the desirability of allowing him to enter the service, physically unfit and temperamentally unsuited as he was (not to mention too old to join up). It is remarkable that they went along with his plan, and hardly surprising that he was found out within the year. Had things gone differently, however, he might never have made it past the recruiting sergeant.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span><span> The sergeant whom Lawrence approached at the office in Henrietta Street, London, in August 1922, knew nothing of his true identity, and immediately recognised the scruffy, undersized individual as unsuitable. He referred the matter to a senior officer, one Flying Officer W E Johns, who shared his view that the man presenting himself as "Ross" was an undesirable and showed him the door. The two officers remained concerned that Ross might be a fugitive from the police. When, later, he returned with official documents to support his application, Johns was forced to accept him, but he was unimpressed with the subterfuge and never warmed to Lawrence.</span><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span><span> William Earl Johns, five years Lawrence's junior, had served throughout the war. In 1917 he had joined the Royal Flying Corps and trained as a fighter pilot. Despite several hair-raising adventures with planes, he was no ace, and late in 1918 was captured by the Germans and spent the last two months of the year as a prisoner of war. He continued in the RAF until 1931, when he began working as a journalist. He later founded a magazine called <i>Popular Flying</i>, and it was in this publication that perhaps the most famous fictional pilot of all time, Biggles, first appeared.<br /></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span><span><span> Johns soon began to use the name "Captain W. E. Johns" for publishing his Biggles stories, and by the time he died in 1968 he had written nearly a hundred Biggles books, in addition to numerous other books, novels, serials and plays on other topics. During the Second World War, at the request of the War Office, he even created a female character, "Worrals", for propaganda purposes</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span><span><span>. </span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span><span><span><span> It will not surprise you to learn that there are two societies, the W E Johns Appreciation Society and "Biggles & Co", in existence, reflecting the popularity of Johns' writing. One great fan of Biggles is SSF founder member, Phil Carradice, who has spoken several times about how Johns inspired him to begin writing. To date Phil has published over 60 books, but I somehow doubt he will ever outdo the publishing record of his literary hero.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-61404245183275335992021-01-04T05:15:00.000-08:002021-01-04T05:15:13.780-08:00December Stillness<p><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="font-weight: 700; text-indent: 28.35pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">December Stillness - a post by Meg Crane</span></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-bac87165-7fff-1f8b-0b0a-e033990aa462"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 28.35pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">December stillness, teach me through your trees</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That loom along the west, one with the land,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The veiled evangel of your mysteries.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 42.55pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Deepens, and dusk imbues me where I stand,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With grave diminishings of green and brown,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 42.55pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Speak roofless Nature, your instinctive words;</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And let me learn your secret from the sky,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Following a flock of steadfast journeying birds</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In lone remote migration beating by.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 28.35pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">December stillness, crossed by twilight roads,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 28.35pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: -16.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Collected Poems </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #4d4c4c; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">p.211. Composed December 1930; pub</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lished January 1934 in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spectator</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -16.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to Jean Moorcroft Wilson,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Sassoon wrote this at Wilsford, Stephen Tennant's house in Wiltshire, on Christmas Eve 1930. Although the relationship would not come to a decisive end for more than another year, it was already evident to Sassoon that it was falling apart, and that he could hang on to what was left of it only by sacrificing his own needs and serving Stephen's errant wishes.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -16.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -16.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As so often, Sassoon pictures himself as a solitary figure enclosed by his own loneliness. If the melancholy landscape in the poem is that of Wiltshire, it is also strongly reminiscent of the Kentish setting of the much earlier poem 'Together' ('Splashing along the boggy woods all day …)</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> – another poem written in response to a lost love. The winter landscape reflects the speaker's sadness, but prompts him in some way to give himself up to whatever Nature can teach him, some wisdom which he believes to exist but cannot yet understand. The bare trees reach upwards to the 'roofless' sky: the image suggests in the first place dereliction and ruin – but something which is 'roofless' may also be limitless. The 'steadfast journeying' birds are travelling out of sight with a purpose which the speaker recognises though he cannot yet share it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -16.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are other characteristic elements, familiar from the war poems. One such is the image of a road. In 'The Road' (</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CP</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> p.32) and 'The Last Meeting' (p.35) - yet another lost-love poem - the speaker is passing along, or watching others pass along, a road which must lead somewhere, but to a destination we never see. Like most middle-class children of his generation, Sassoon was brought up on </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Pilgrim's Progress</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, with its absorbing myth of a journey which goes on through darkness, danger and incomprehension, but which in the end leads through every danger and past every obstacle to a promised haven.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -16.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the closing phrase 'bear my loads' we have another image of travelling and patient endurance, recalling the soldier-cum-Christ-figure in 'The Redeemer'</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ('Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear'). Although Sassoon's conversion still lay more than twenty years ahead, there is the religious imagery and vocabulary ('evangel' and 'mysteries' in line 3) and the invocation to some spiritual force, which recur in Sassoon's work all the way from 'Before Day' in 1908 ('Come in this hour to set my spirit free')</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to 'Prayer at Pentecost' in 1960 ('Spirit, who speak'st by silences, remake me'). As a soldier Sassoon was known for a courage of the reckless kind which earned him the nickname of 'Mad Jack' – but his poems more commonly celebrate the kind of courage which forces itself on in the belief, or hope, that there is some purpose and end to it all.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: -14.2pt; margin-right: -16.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am hoping to find other Sassoon poems which link to particular months of the year. This blog entry should have appeared last month, in December – my apologies, and I will try to move more synchronously next time!</span></p><br /><br /></span>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-12592632649982597982020-10-18T07:27:00.004-07:002020-10-18T07:27:54.986-07:00In the Blood<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span>This is not a book review - I want to emphasize that. However, I have just finished reading Andrew Motion's childhood memoir, <i>In the Blood</i>, and I am struck by the resemblances between Motion's childhood and that of Siegfried Sassoon - and also by the many differences between them. I am not sure where I got my copy - I think I won it in a raffle, probably at the AGM of the Alliance of Literary Societies a few years ago - but it was only when I started to run out of reading matter during lockdown that I finally got around to opening it. I'm not sure what put me off previously, but, once begun, it proved to be compelling reading.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span>Andrew Motion's parents, unlike Siegfried's, had a happy marriage. They were evidently well-off, not at all your typical family, but their individual personalities come through very distinctly in Motion's account. He and his brother Kit were rather different in character, for a start. That was probably also the case with Siegfried and his brothers, and it's no accident that, in <i>Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man</i>, Siegfried chose to represent himself as an only child, and an orphan to boot. Whilst very good at drawing short character sketches of village personalities, it's noticeable that he does not try very hard explore the psyche of his close friends and </span><span style="font-family: arial;">immediate</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">family. Andrew Motion, on the other hand, whilst dwelling on some "characters", such as the gardener and various schoolmasters, gets inside his close family with a few pen-strokes - the busy, reserved, often distracted father, the extrovert, dominant grandfather, and so on.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> Like the Sassoon boys, Motion I and II (as they became known at prep school) were taught to ride and hunt early on. Indeed, it was held up as a kind of life goal for them that they should not only practise such outdoor pursuits but should become skilled at them. It didn't come naturally to Andrew, who liked observing nature but was all fingers and thumbs when it came to controlling a recalcitrant pony or tickling a trout. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><span> The prep school to which Motion was packed off, courtesy of his grandfather's money, at the age of eight, sounds not unlike Dickens's Dotheboys Hall. Any 21st-century parent would have been over there like a shot</span></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">to remove him</span><span style="font-family: arial;">. In fact, if the facilities were as disgusting as he suggests and the punishments as extreme and unmerited, no self-respecting parent would have left him there in the first place. He survived mainly by discovering poetry and conversing with his sympathetic but somewhat ineffectual English teacher. Strangely, he seems to have been disappointed at not being put forward for Eton. Luckily, someone saw something in him that he did not, and Radley College proved much more congenial, particularly after a new headmaster, one Dennis Silk, arrived in 1968 and made the school "more like a family". Any reader who knew Dennis in person will have no difficulty in believing this.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><span> </span>By his mid-teens Motion was becoming a quiet rebel, rejecting the hunting, shooting and fishing aspect of his parents' lifestyle, but afraid to say so openly, mainly because of his affection for his frail mother. It was too unfortunate that it should have been his mother who suffered the riding accident from which she never fully recovered; the book spares us the full knowledge of the subsequent difficult years. This is where, I think, he differs most from Siegfried Sassoon, whose memoirs tend to gloss over any deep affection he may have felt towards close relatives. </span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> And yet, taken as a whole, there are certainly resemblances between this book and <i>MFHM</i>, which is not surprising when you learn that Sassoon's fictionalised memoir was one of the first adult books Andrew Motion read and enjoyed. It was purchased for him - naturally - by his mother.<br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><span> </span><br /></span></span></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-8030818098903884132020-09-21T12:40:00.002-07:002020-09-21T12:40:18.280-07:00Conference time: the "New Normal"<p style="text-align: justify;"> <span> </span>It was with great regret, tinged with a certain amount of relief, that we recently gave members of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship the news that we could not hold an AGM and conference this year. Many societies like ours have been faced with the dilemma of what to do about their commitment to an Annual General Meeting. Some have gone with the dreaded Zoom option - with varying success, whilst others have found alternative methods of dealing with members remotely.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span>In our case, we pondered for some months before coming to the conclusion that it was not going to be easy to find a way to deal with the problem and it might be better to admit defeat. Having taken advice from the Charities Commission, we announced the decision on our website and in <i>Siegfried's Journal</i> and we continue to hope and pray that it will not be long before members can meet in person once again. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span>Conferences, we've found, are not just about listening to interesting talks, or even about the opportunity to discuss them afterwards. After all, our <i>Journal</i>, with its variety of content, is the envy of many societies and keeps members informed as effectively, albeit not as quickly, as social media can do. However, those who attend our events invariably contact us afterwards to say how much they have enjoyed meeting fellow members and how much they are looking forward to doing so again. Although the numbers attending have dropped off in the past couple of years, there is still a core of members who feel absolutely distraught if they find, for whatever reason, that they cannot attend in person.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span>This being the case, it's hard to offer an alternative that is likely to satisfy our membership in these times when fellowship and personal contact are most needed and most highly valued. On the other hand...</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span> I learned a lesson in July, when helping to judge a local poetry competition that normally takes place during the week of the village fete, in our local pub. So popular has the contest been in the past that, when we were selected for the semi-finals of Channel 4's "Village of the Year" in 2018, the presenter Patrick Grant came along to the pub to talk to some of the competitors, and even wrote his own original humorous verse in honour of the village. This year, things were different. Competitors had to make recordings of themselves reading their poems, and these were broadcast by our temporary local radio station on the day we would have held the fete. </span><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span> The outcome was that we had about twice as many poems submitted as usual, and of a generally much higher standard. Admittedly, many of them concentrated on experiences of lockdown, but there was enough variety to enable us to pick out a few really original, accomplished pieces of work. As I came to realise, people who would not normally have participated in the competition when it was held in the pub - like the 89-year-old local farmer who won the "Poet Laureate" title - were only too ready to join in if they did not have to stand up in front of a room full of people to read their poem. Moreover, with time on their hands, many of them had been inspired by the current crisis to put pen to paper, and had found an outlet for feelings they might otherwise have found hard to express.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span> The result of the competition was encouraging, but perhaps it was rash of me to agree to the idea of my "other" literary society, the Barbara Pym Society (about which I have previously written in this blog), putting on a one-hour Zoom "mini-conference" for the benefit of members around the world. There was little technical support available to us, and even the running order was not finally confirmed until <i>after </i>we had begun the meeting (owing to a live participant who was holidaying in Italy suddenly informing us that she had to go out to dinner instead!) Somehow we stumbled through the programme of talks and chat, and the many technical problems we experienced led me to assume that members were sitting at home thinking what a useless Chair I was and perhaps wishing they had not wasted an hour when they could have been watching TV.<br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Not a bit of it. I'm sure there was some discontent on the part of a few individuals, but in general those watching expressed considerable appreciation for our efforts, one going so far as to say that it was "just what one would expect from a Pym event". Indeed, there is an episode in one of her novels where an incompetent bishop attempts to give a magic lantern show to a local audience and gets his slides upside-down. At times I felt very like that! What I realised, however, was that members wanted contact with other members, <i>something </i>to laugh about, <i>something </i>to replace the in-person meeting that they would otherwise have had, <i>something </i>to remind them of good times past and better things to come. And I think we managed to achieve that. I am sure we will be able to do better next time.<br /></p>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-19774988383048602332020-08-09T02:37:00.001-07:002020-08-09T02:37:21.597-07:00Britten, the pacifist<div style="text-align: justify;">I wonder how many people, like me, bored with the cookery programmes, worthy dramas and so-called "reality TV", especially during lockdown, have found themselves reduced to scrolling down the alphabetical list of elderly BBC documentaries on iPlayer? One such search yielded a 2013 programme about the composer Benjamin Britten.</div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"> I didn't even know about the informal performances given by Britten and his partner Peter Pears on the BBC in the 1960s, short interludes with Britten at the piano and Pears in a cardigan. Thus, although I remember the Dudley Moore (himself a highly talented musician) parody of these performances, I had no idea at the time <i>what </i>he was parodying. Apparently Pears - the chief victim of the parody - took it in good spirit, but Britten was very hurt. He had not been singled out by Moore, who also parodied Brecht and Weill and several other better-known classical composers, yet clearly he took his work seriously and did not respond well to being held up to ridicule.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, were lifelong pacifists, both of whom applied for recognition as conscientious objectors during the Second World War. (Britten was not born until 1913, and claimed that his pacifism was an indirect result of the harsh regime he experienced at boarding school.) Like Sassoon, he became a member of the inter-war Peace Pledge Union, on whose behalf he wrote a piece of music called <i>Pacifist March</i>. As a composer, he was still in the process of building his reputation, and the march was not a big hit in the run-up to the war. In the same year, 1937, there were two major events in his life: his mother died, and he met Peter Pears.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span> Their pacifism was one of the reasons for Britten and Pears leaving the UK for Canada and later the United States, where they were less exposed to the hostility of what Sassoon called "jingo". They returned to the UK before the end of the war and Britten agreed to work for the Ministry of Information.</span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"> Yet in 2013, while preparing a film about Britten for the centenary of his birth, director Tony Palmer claimed that the Ministry of Defence had refused him permission to use a piece of training film when they found out he was working on material about Britten, on the grounds that the MOD could not be seen to deal with "cowards" and "deserters". The MOD denied any such motive, but it may be that Palmer had happened to come into contact with individuals who held such views, of which many can be found on your nearest high street. </div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span>Britten's music can be something of an acquired taste, but that he was a remarkable talent is hardly open to debate. His setting of Wilfred Owen's "At a Calvary near the Ancre"<span style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 10.4618px; white-space: pre;"> </span></span>was included in the concert, "Songs of War", organised by the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship in partnership with other war poets' societies at St James's Church, Piccadilly, in 2009. Really, though, this song is part of the <i>War Requiem</i> that Britten wrote in 1962 for the consecration of Coventry Cathedral, a modern replacement constructed right next to the ancient building destroyed by German bombing in 1941. Many of us can clearly remember watching the opening on black-and-white television, though of course its significance was lost on a six-year-old child, as I then was.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> The <i>War Requiem</i>, generally regarded as Britten's masterpiece, included a substantial chunk of Wilfred Owen's poetry (including "Anthem for Doomed Youth", the poem Sassoon helped him write), and no doubt introduced Owen's work to a much wider audience. These texts are interspersed with the traditional sequences of the Latin requiem - "Kyrie Eleison", "Dies irae", "Libera me", etc. One great admirer of the work was the late Dom Sebastian Moore, who described to me in our 2007 interview how it had moved him.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span> Britten's love of poetry was not limited to Owen and the war poets. He was a great admirer of the work of Thomas Hardy and William Blake, and was a close personal friend of W H Auden. Around 150 poets in total were given the Britten treatment, a staggering figure, but I can't find Sassoon among them; nor have I as yet found any clues as to Sassoon's opinions on Britten's music. Siegfried was very musical and would certainly have had a view</span>. The two men were far apart in age, but not enough to have precluded them becoming friends, and they moved in the same circles and shared many ideas. It's impossible that they did not meet on occasions, and yet I can't find a direct link between them. Just another of the many remaining gaps in my knowledge of Siegfried Sassoon.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div></div></div></div>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-72351434044667118682020-07-11T04:44:00.002-07:002020-07-12T03:57:49.592-07:00Book review: The Battle of Tsushima 1904<p style="text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit">Phil Carradice describes himself as a "storyteller" rather than a historian. This may ring alarm bells with some who do not like his drama-documentary style of writing. However, to the best of my knowledge, there are no events in this book that did not happen. To quote one of the UK's greatest contemporary historians, Michael Wood, writing just this month in the <i>BBC History</i> magazine, "Stories are what history is about."</font></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Personally, I don't mind a little imagination being added to the descriptions, as happens almost on the first page of this book when Carradice describes the feelings of the future Czar Nicholas II on being confronted by a would-be assassin during what should have been a leisure trip to Japan. This incident, thirteen years before the battle took place, is considered key to Nicholas's subsequent attitude to Japan, and certainly much of the blame for the disastrous (for the Russians) battle which is the subject of this book rests at the czar's door. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span>In the first decade of the twentieth century, Russia was a massive empire largely governed by high-born incompetents and heading for trouble, whilst Japan was a small, mysterious nation emerging from centuries of isolation and not taken seriously by the western world. The czar's word was law, and Nicholas was no military tactician. After a series of defeats for his Pacific fleet, he insisted on a large force of unsuitable ships being sent out from the Baltic to Vladivostok to replace them, firmly believing that quantity was a substitute for quality.</span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Throughout the narrative, we are treated to intriguing stories - stories about the admiral of the Russian fleet, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">Zinovy Petrovich "Mad Dog" Rozhestvensky, a man who did his best with the sub-standard raw materials allotted to him, threw his binoculars overboard whenever thwarted, and frequently retreated to his cabin to wallow in deep depression. It seems miraculous that he and his ships ever arrived in the Tsushima Strait, let alone put up any kind of fight against the better-equipped Japanese fleet, with its more highly-skilled and better-trained crews, and led by the enigmatic Admiral Togo. No wonder the battle ended with around 5000 Russian lives lost, compared with less than 200 Japanese.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">As one might expect in a book of this kind, there are many names - of ships, people and places - that are unfamiliar to an English-speaking reader and difficult to memorize. It is thus a major frustration that there is no index. As far as I can make out, most of Pen & Sword's excellent non-fiction works have one, and I can only assume that this is an oversight by the editors (who, sadly, don't seem to have expended much effort on proof-reading either).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: left;"><span> </span>The major service this book does (and the reason I'm reviewing it here) is that it puts the Battle of Tsushima in its historical context. Phil Carradice ably shows how preceding events led up to it, and also how it led indirectly to Russia's involvement in the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and Japan's subsequent rise to a position of world power that was not easy to control. Russia's opinion of herself, and Japan's growing confidence, were affected for many decades to come. Thus a battle that may, taken in isolation, seem unconnected with the world conflicts of the twentieth century, is shown to be very relevant and well worth writing and reading about.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">Phil Carradice, <i>The Battle of Tsushima</i>. Pen & Sword, 2020. ISBN</span><font face="inherit"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; text-align: left;">978-1526743343</span></font></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><br /></span></font></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><br /></span></font></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-5670243243264163392020-06-11T07:22:00.001-07:002020-07-11T04:48:21.734-07:00War and taxes<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was Benjamin Franklin who said that only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. He might have said "war and taxes", which is almost equally true. Moreover, history has demonstrated that war is often inextricably linked with taxes, either as a cause or a result of them.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Five years ago, in the monograph on Henry Vaughan that I wrote for Cecil Woolf's War Poets series, I drew attention to the many parallels between the seventeenth-century poet whom Siegfried Sassoon admired and Sassoon himself. One of my aims was to show that, although warfare may become more mechanised, in essence it does not become more sophisticated, and the wartime experiences of those who participated in the English Civil War were not so different from those of twentieth-century soldiers. I am reminded of this time and time again when reading about Britain's history of warfare. Some of the episodes I am about to mention may seem startlingly familiar.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Most recently, I have been researching the series of events known, somewhat inaccurately, as The Hundred Years War, a long-running conflict between England and France. When I say "England", I do mean England. Scotland was a separate kingdom, which had its own troubles. Wales had been annexed by England in 1284, and for more than two hundred years after that, the Welsh were effectively second-class citizens in the merged kingdom. (This situation stemmed from the fact that neither the Saxons nor the Danes had ever controlled Wales or Scotland and the resulting ethnic divisions would not be healed until 1603, when James VI of Scotland inherited the throne of Queen Elizabeth I. Long before that, however, the French were seen by their close relations, the Anglo-Norman nobility, as the real enemy.)</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I note that 21st July will be the anniversary of the Battle of Shrewsbury, which fell right in the middle of the Hundred Years War, but had nothing much to do with it. The main antagonists, on that occasion, were Harry Percy, son of the Duke of Northumberland - known as "Hotspur" because of his impetuous nature (who does this remind you of?) - and King Henry IV, to whom Percy had previously given his allegiance. In this case, there were Welshmen on both sides, since the rebellious Percy and his father had made an alliance with Owain Glyndwr, a Welsh nobleman who had taken up the sword after being unfairly treated in a dispute with his English neighbour. At the same time, the king had long-standing associations with Wales, where he was a leading landowner, and was able to call hundreds of Welshmen to his side.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Someone asked me recently why Richard II of England was such an unpopular king. The answer, I fear, may lie less in Richard's mercurial personality than in the fact that he brought a temporary end to the Hundred Years War. One only has to look back to the Falklands conflict of 1982 to see how a national leader can trade on a foreign invasion to gain lasting popularity, although in the case of the Hundred Years War, England may be regarded as the aggressor. Richard II had been born at Bordeaux, in the English Crown's French territories, and his father (the "Black Prince") had worn himself out fighting multiple large-scale battles in order to maintain English power on the Continent. Richard was a very different man from his father, and had no wish to spend his life campaigning overseas. Eventually he was forced to take steps to defend the realm against possible invasion, and this meant raising taxes. However, Richard refused to take the financial hit himself, declining to reduce his household bills. Having married the French king's daughter and made a peace treaty, he was surrounded by frustrated noblemen, branded a tyrant, and deposed.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Welsh rebellion broke out almost immediately, and Richard's cousin Henry IV found that it was not as easy to keep the whole country happy as he had anticipated. Twenty years after his son, the Prince of Wales, was seriously wounded at Shrewsbury (almost certainly resulting in a permanently disfiguring scar), the prince came to the throne as the glorious King Henry V, who is remembered as a saviour of the nation in the war against France that resumed in 1415. Many Britons are under the false impression that the Battle of Agincourt was decisive. Miraculous as it was, it did not significantly assist the English in their goal of taking the French throne. It would be another five bloody years before Henry was recognised as the heir of King Charles VI of France, and his death at the age of 35 led on to further bloodshed in the form of a renewal of war with France, followed at close quarters by the Wars of the Roses.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The men who participated in these wars often lived to regret their experiences. Sir John Cornwall, a veteran of Agincourt, later served Henry in a second French campaign, in the course of which he witnessed his 17-year-old only son having his head blown off by a cannonball. Sir John vowed never again to fight a war of conquest. Reading this, I could not help thinking of the death of David Thomas, and the words of Sassoon's 1917 declaration: "I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest." It simply was not worth the human suffering. </div>
Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-16867723618179836362020-05-08T01:17:00.000-07:002020-05-08T01:17:13.476-07:00VE Day at Heytesbury<div style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">On 8th May 1945, as the rest of the nation celebrated victory in Europe with noisy parties and military parades, Siegfried Sassoon wrote that he felt a sense of "mental flatness". He had done his best to avoid anything to do with the Second World War. (As usual with Sassoon, his actions were contradictory; he had written for the papers to back up the war effort, though it can be safely assumed that his heart was not in it.) He must have felt that he and his generation had failed. After the Great War, they had initially believed that there would never be another one like it. Sassoon, with his Jewish blood, must quickly have come to realise that it was inevitable, despite the pacifism he had embraced in the 1930s. Even his own published work had been banned in Germany.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcEKJ_18qOI5otguqexC_qrQnBSSNtW5Dzn1styxIEy-ew62GyfSNIlC1bz5eqPWcu0eUzwMr3gColGpm05XAEe9QVz3KXf8bl1Wa0BgjiKQEZJN5lwhReuuCcV-UIpsXepNTRoC7O1ys/s1600/RWF+1945.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcEKJ_18qOI5otguqexC_qrQnBSSNtW5Dzn1styxIEy-ew62GyfSNIlC1bz5eqPWcu0eUzwMr3gColGpm05XAEe9QVz3KXf8bl1Wa0BgjiKQEZJN5lwhReuuCcV-UIpsXepNTRoC7O1ys/s320/RWF+1945.jpg" title="RWF victory parade in Paris 1945" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the time came and the <i>Observer</i>, a paper that had once been owned by his own family, asked him for a celebratory poem, he produced something much less congratulatory in tone. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">His peace at Heytesbury House had been seriously disturbed by the war, with evacuees needing to be accommodated, and he had retreated to his study to work on his memoirs, leaving the additional work to his young wife Hester, who already had her hands full with their son George, still a toddler in 1939.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="font-size: 13.2px;">
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many of Sassoon's friends enlisted, but he was not tempted to apply to join the Home Guard. He told one of his friends that he felt like "a semi-submerged barge on a derelict canal". He started to despise Hester for taking an interest in the progress of the war. Nevertheless, he conceived a great dislike for Hitler and began to see this conflict as the final struggle between good and evil. This was in contrast with the feelings of some of his friends, such as Edmund Blunden and J C Dunn, who were both unhappy with Britain's conduct.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="font-size: 13.2px;">
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the end of the war, the first two volumes of memoirs had sold well and received praise from reviewers, one notable exception being Malcolm Muggeridge, who had referred to <i>The Old Century </i>as "an anaemic fairy story". However, even combined with the successes of D-Day and the prospect of an end to the war at last, it was not enough to make 1945 a happy year for Sassoon</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">. During the war, his former lover, Stephen Tennant, had crawled out of the woodwork, making unexpected visits to Heytesbury. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">He was the last person Siegfried wanted to see.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Someone he cared about far more, Glen Byam Shaw, had been badly wounded while serving in the far east</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Another friend, Rex Whistler, was killed in 1944. In the meantime, Siegfried's relationship with Hester had gradually deteriorated and was at breaking point.</span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">His friend Blunden had already divorced two wives, and Sassoon began to think that this was the only way out of his problems with Hester. He had sent her to stay with her mother, but she refused to stay away, continuing to phone and visit frequently. Rather than celebrate VE Day together, he insisted that Hester return to her mother's, and himself ignored what was going on outside the haven of Heytesbury. His poem had appeared in the <i>Observer </i>two days earlier.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">"To Some Who Say Production Won The War" was a sad and bitter poem. It began with a dig at the profiteers, who had come through the war at the expense of others who had given their lives: "Defenders of the soul of man assailed/By foul aggression and its creed of crime."</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the time the Japanese had been defeated in August 1945, Sassoon declared he was past caring. "I have no literary ambition at all now," he wrote, adding that his life from now on would be centred on his son George. He had failed to recognise the inevitability of losing his son to adulthood. For the moment, he tried to settle back into the comfortable rural existence he had previously enjoyed.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-80909982633513719952020-04-25T04:21:00.002-07:002020-04-25T04:21:28.714-07:00Alone<div style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Alone" was the poem that first brought John Stuart Roberts, Siegfried Sassoon's first biographer, to his appreciation of the poet. Sassoon himself said that "it was the first of my post-war poems in which I discovered my mature mode of utterance". He was, at the time, feeling isolated, despite sharing a house in London with his friends, Walter and Delphine Turner. He had gradually developed a dislike of Walter Turner, brought on partly by Turner's mistreatment of his wife, Delphine, for whom Sassoon felt great sympathy. Sassoon lived on the top floor and had little interest in associating with his downstairs neighbour. He was desperate to leave.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="font-size: 13.2px;">
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The poem was actually written after a visit from Glen Byam Shaw, the young actor who would remain one of Sassoon's greatest friends throughout his life</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">. Glen had brightened up his evening, as well as helping him to find alternative accommodation in a house at Campden Hill Square, which nowadays boasts a blue plaque recording Sassoon's residence there. The words of the poem suggest that the poet was feeling his age and possibly even believing that it was affecting his state of mind.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the middle of the crisis that is currently affecting most of society, I wonder how many people have begun to feel that they are "getting strange", as Sassoon's poem puts it. He did not mind being alone - he loved books, and liked to have his own space in which to ponder and write his poetry. Nevertheless, he was fond of company. In his youth, he had enjoyed playing team games as well as solitary excursions on his horse and long cycle rides. During the war years, he had mixed well with his comrades, even those who were not on the same intellectual level (the incident when Robert Graves identified him as a kindred spirit by what he was reading speaks volumes).</span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the other hand, it was Sassoon's preference for his own company and need for peace and quiet that would prove to be one of the deciding factors in the break-up of his marriage. He had expected Hester to be there when he wanted her, and to stay out of his way when he didn't. When he wrote: "I thought how strange we grow when we're alone/And how unlike the selves that meet and talk," he was already recognising his own shortcomings in this respect, but that recognition failed to bring him happiness in the long term. He was truly set in his ways. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">Perhaps some of us, feeling a little depressed by this enforced isolation, have been told by friends or family to "snap out of it" or reminded how lucky we are not to be living in a tenth floor flat or working in the NHS without the necessary PPE. Does it make us feel any better? I doubt it. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">Chris Packham, the TV naturalist, has been open about his own struggles with depression and commented recently that isolation was easy for him because he spends a lot of his working life alone, exploring the countryside with only nature for company. However, he also stated that he would find it impossible to be confined to the house and unable to go out for walks, and that he feels this is essential for his mental health. </span></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Siegfried, I think, was such a person. He was perfectly willing to isolate himself on the top floor of the house in Tufton Street with his books, while the Turners carried on their separate lives downstairs. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; white-space: pre-wrap;">He would probably have managed more than adequately in the present situation, provided there was someone to bring him his meals. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">What he could not stand was being stuck indoors, and in an environment such as central London, country walks were not possible even if he did go out. Campden Hill Square was at least in a greener, leafier part of the capital. However, it's not surprising that as soon as he could afford it (courtesy of the legacy from Auntie Rachel) he moved to a rural area in the west of England where he had a private estate at his disposal. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-6260348728719942452020-03-26T04:11:00.000-07:002020-03-26T04:11:04.354-07:00Boredom 2020-style<div style="text-align: justify;">
One of the biggest worries for people in the UK and other developed countries in the current situation is boredom. We have so many types of entertainment at our disposal, and yet the one thing everyone wants to do at the moment is to go outside. Forget the convenience of online ordering; we want to go to the shops. We can make a cup of coffee at home but it's much more appealing to go out to a coffee shop with friends and spend an hour chatting. We can easily phone our relatives, but we would rather see them face to face. This gives me some optimism for the future of the human race. Perhaps, in the future, we will come to appreciate the natural world and the joys of physical contact more than we ever did.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Siegfried Sassoon talks about boredom sometimes in his memoirs. Very much an outdoor man in his youth, he realised on arriving at the Western Front what other soldiers also mentioned - the boredom of being in the trenches, alternating as it did with short periods of extreme danger and horror. Officers were obliged to invent monotonous tasks to keep their men occupied - filling sandbags, cleaning out the latrines, etc. It was critical to keep up their morale. I like this quote from the letters of Max Staniforth (1893-1985), who wrote:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">The only way to be here is to be philosophical. We have evolved a philosophy accordingly. What do you think of it?</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If you are a soldier, you are either:</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">(1) at home or (2) at the Front.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If (1), you needn’t worry.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If (2), you are either (1) out of the danger zone or (2) in it.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If (1), you needn’t worry.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If (2), you are either (1) not hit, or (2) hit.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If (1), you needn’t worry.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If (2) you are either (1) trivial or (2) dangerous.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If (1), you needn’t worry.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If (2), you either (1) live or (2) die.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">If you live, you needn’t worry: and – If you die, YOU CAN’T WORRY!!</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">So why worry?</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When we think about how much worse off we could be, we inevitably feel guilty about complaining of boredom, but I feel sure it won't take long for us to forget. In years to come, we'll be telling our children about the time we had to stay indoors for a few weeks and how hard it was. And they won't understand...</div>
Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-40867291907500260072020-03-05T10:52:00.000-08:002020-03-05T10:52:22.122-08:00The First World War at the Movies<div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Have you seen it yet? Of course, I'm talking about <i>1917</i>, the film that was widely tipped to win Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars, but didn't. I've read that there are over a hundred films about the First World War - well, pardon me, but it feels like a lot more than that, and it seems to me that there has been a spate of films on the subject in the aftermath of the centenary commemorations, which is odd. Admittedly, it does take a long time to come up with the idea of a film, get the finance and then do the work. Perhaps some producers and writers only thought of it in 2014 and ran out of time before their projects came to fruition.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite the plethora of films about the Great War that have been made since 1914, there are many that we never get the opportunity to see. Silent films, for a start, never appear on television and it would be nice to get the chance to find out whether any of them were any good. For example, Wikipedia tells me that British film star Madeleine Carroll (best known for her later role in </span></span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">The 39 Steps </i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">opposite Robert Donat) made her first screen appearance in 1928's </span></span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">The Guns of Loos</i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">, the plot of which involves a blind veteran who "returns home to run his family's industrial empire".</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Believe it or not, music hall star Vesta Tilley, already in her fifties, appeared in a 1916 film called <i>The Girl Who Loves a Soldier</i>, as a nurse who disguises herself as a man in order to carry out a dangerous mission on behalf of her beloved. In the same year, an Australian film, <i>The Joan of Arc of Loos</i>, offered an alternative angle on the events of the previous year, focusing on a French girl who is inspired to wade into battle against the aggressors, eventually being awarded a medal for her heroism. The strangest thing about the film is that it is based on a real-life incident.</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The most interesting prospect, for us, is the new film, currently or about to be "in the making", called <i>Benediction</i>, which features Siegfried Sassoon as its central character. It's not due to hit our screens until 2021, so I can't tell you much about it. I've seen it described as a "biopic", but my impression is that it's mainly about Sassoon's wartime activities and specifically about his protest of 1917. Jack Lowden, who plays Sassoon, is Scottish and ginger-haired, but after all he's an actor so one assumes he can effectively convey an impression of a real person who looked nothing like him. I gather that another Scottish actor, Peter Capaldi, has been selected to play the older Sassoon, which will be equally interesting. Let's face it, it can't be any further from the truth than the bearded version played by John Hurt on TV in 2016.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="font-size: 13.2px;">
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Sassoon has of course been depicted on screen previously, notably by James Wilby in Gillies MacKinnon's <i>Regeneration</i>. Although Whitby was blond, a fact that the film's makers made no attempt to disguise, he certainly had an air of Sassoon about him, and of course one must bear in mind that the film was adapted from Pat Barker's novel, which had its own interpretation of the man and his personality. The relatively unknown actors Stevan Rimkus (<i>The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles</i>) and Morgan Watkins (<i>The Pity of War</i>) are among those who have played the young Sassoon on television, plus of course Michael Jayston in the 1970 TV play <i>Mad Jack</i>, about which I posted last September.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="font-size: 13.2px;">
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Noting that the new James Bond film's release date has just been postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak, it's possible that the filming of <i>Benediction</i> will also be delayed, especially if there is difficulty raising the necessary funds. (I have no inside knowledge on this, but we do hope to be able to fill you in on further details as time goes on.) How will Sassoon be portrayed in this latest screen version of his life, and, more importantly, will the significance of his life be recognised as it deserves? Time alone will tell.</span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
</div>
</div>
</div>
Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-17524070245056459622020-02-19T08:36:00.000-08:002020-02-19T08:36:04.048-08:00David Baddiel versus the Holocaust<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have to admit that I generally avoid watching television programmes about the Second World War, particularly if they involve the Holocaust. It is perhaps difficult for someone who is not Jewish to accept the crimes committed against the Jews over many centuries, not only by Fascist governments such as Hitler's but by the native populations of other so-called Christian countries. It happened that I watched one such BBC documentary earlier this week and it came as something of a shock to learn that, in the world as a whole, as many as one in six people don't believe that the Holocaust actually happened. I can't imagine how Siegfried Sassoon would have reacted to that piece of information.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the benefit of those who don't know him, <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">David Baddiel is a British comedian best known for his participation in light-hearted programmes about football. Like most successful comedians, he is highly-educated, a Cambridge graduate and former PhD candidate. And of course he is Jewish. For him, the business of confronting the "Holocaust deniers" is truly painful. When he described how hard he found it not to get exasperated and angry with them and at the same time not to get involved in arguing with them, he was describing feelings that Sassoon had, in relation to some of his right-wing friends. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">"The Case for the Miners" was a poem in which he described those feelings: </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>"And that's the reason why I shout and splutter..." </i> He wasn't talking about the fate of the Jews. He wasn't even talking about the First World War. He was talking about the assumption of a few of his friends that those who were less fortunate than themselves had somehow deserved their fate. The miners weren't so badly off, they argued. Even if they had more money, they wouldn't spend it wisely. Sassoon found himself a one-man opposition to people who were talking what he felt was inhumane nonsense. His response was to get himself a job as a political correspondent so he could visit South Wales and find out what was really going on. Doubting himself as he usually did, he wanted to be 100% </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">sure he was on the side of the truth.</span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">This was also the case with David Baddiel, who felt he had to talk to the Holocaust deniers simply to be sure that they really didn't have any worthwhile arguments to offer. He went on to describe his mixed feelings about the idea of a Holocaust Memorial Day, eventually reasoning that the inhuman conduct of the Nazis towards the Jews and the events he was disc</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">ussing were unbelievable, which was in itself enough justification for a memorial. To look at it another way, if the Menin Gate had not been built, would anyone today find it possible to belie</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">ve that over 50,000 men died in the Ypres Salient without their bodies ever having been recovered?</span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">It brings to mind a scene from Sebastian Faulks's novel <i>Birdsong</i>, when Stephen's granddaughter Elizabeth, looking at the names on the Thiepval Memorial, exclaims,"Nobody told me. My God, nobody told me." Until now she has had no idea of the enormity of the Western Front's catalogue of death.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so Sassoon and Baddiel are brought together by a desire to ensure that no one can excuse their present behaviour by claiming a lack of awareness of the terrible deeds of the past. Sassoon would have liked the First World War to be the war to end all wars, but within twenty years he was seeing history repeat itself, as Britain went to war with Germany for a second time. He did not favour it, but the gradual realisation that, as a Jew, he would have been one of those earmark</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; white-space: pre-wrap;">ed for torture and extermination by</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the Nazis must have been a severe blow to his belief in humankind.</span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">As so often, t</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; white-space: pre-wrap;">here is no conclusion to this post. I have no answers to the questions faced by these two men. I can only say that I admire them both.</span></span></span><br />
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2099957437228892523.post-3326539526459611092020-01-17T03:09:00.000-08:002020-01-17T03:09:43.727-08:00Old Age<div style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 48px;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;">"It doesn't come alone." </span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;">As the years go by, I find myself saying this more and more. My contemporaries and I used to discuss the problems we were having with our children, and the various amusing things they had said and done. Now we discuss the problems we are having with our aging relatives, and the various amusing things they have said and done. I recall Margo Blunden telling me that her father, Edmund, used to talk about his friend, the aged Siegfried Sassoon, in much the same way during the 1960s. "Poor old Sig..." </span></span></span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;">It happens in life and is reflected in literary societies, and indeed in all kinds of voluntary organisations.</span> You've probably heard someone, somewhere, in the past few months, complaining about being unable to get younger volunteers to keep services going, to participate in committees, and so on. Few and far between are the young singles who want to spend their spare time in the company of old fogeys like us, and equally hard to acquire is the help of those with young children, who have very little time to spare for anything other than the daily grind. Equally, those who work full-time don't often want to spend their evenings doing clerical work for those who can't pay them to do so (although they sometimes like to spend their leisure time attending events of the kind we continue to organise).</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;">Just recently I've once again found myself discussing the question of subscription rates, a matter that comes up regularly in all the societies I'm involved with. Should we do away with the "seniors" rate, since most members are seniors? Should we change the age limit from 60 to 65 or even 70? In some cases I'm now paying the seniors rate myself, and I don't relish the idea of having to pay more when I'm living on a pension. In terms of the SSF, we've always striven hard to keep our membership rates affordable, preferring not to build up a massive bank balance we can't justify - but other societies sometimes feel it necessary to have that cushion there for security. For who knows what the economy is going to be doing this time next year, let alone in ten years' time?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;">To return to Sassoon, his latter years were a time of self-examination. In his twenties and thirties, he had achieved much, although he chose to belittle himself. In January 1918, with his best times still ahead, he wrote in his diary, "I am home again in the ranks of youth - the company of death". In middle age he revisited his early years, as well as his army career, eloquently describing, in <i>The Weald of Youth</i>, the mixed feelings that had caused him to join up in the first place. He came late to marriage and parenthood, something that often indirectly leads to failure on one or both fronts, and he was very aware of the impending danger of a loss of physical and/or mental faculty, hence the enjoyment he felt in the company of younger people, and his determination to play cricket into his seventies, even if it meant having a runner.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;">His letters to Dame Felicitas Corrigan were full of self-examination (as though he had not done enough of it when writing his memoirs), but we know from Dennis Silk's account that he had not lost his wry sense of humour. His friendship with Ronald Knox during the 1950s was a meeting of like minds; Sassoon commented that he enjoyed Ronald's more light-hearted works, such as <i>Let Dons Delight</i>, which he had already read five times by 1962. Knox, of course, was only 69 when he died; Siegfried was already 71 when he converted. But, unlike Lady Acton, one of Knox's younger and more serious-minded converts, who threw one of Knox's detective novels over the side of a cruise ship because she found it too frivolous, Sassoon appreciated both sides of a person's character, and perhaps even preferred the frivolous. Dom Sebastian Moore, the monk who actually gave him his instruction in the Catholic faith after Knox's death, suggested that he had little interest in topics such as transsubstantiation and the immaculate conception, preferring simply to accept these as an excuse to chat with Moore for hours on their bench in the rock garden at Downside.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;">The darker side of Sassoon's old age is revealed by Dennis Silk's recordings of the elderly poet reading his war poems. After meeting him for the first an only time, in 1964, the poet and artist David Jones said, "However much he tried he could never get that 1st War business out of his system, which is exactly the case with me". Felicitas Corrigan felt that the "egocentricity" of Sassoon's latter years, though undeniable, was not a problem, and his last published poem, "A Prayer for Pentecost", reveals that he had achieved at least a degree of inner peace. May we all be granted that.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08825187895580530151noreply@blogger.com0