Laurence Binyon was born in Lancaster, England, on 10 August 1869, and died in Reading on 10 March 1943. During his lifetime he occupied an unusual and influential place in British cultural life: he was a poet, dramatist, translator, art historian, museum curator, critic, and lecturer. Yet public memory has narrowed him, often understandably, to the author of “For the Fallen,” the 1914 poem whose most famous stanza h…
“But what is rhythm? No one seems to know precisely, though we can often recognise what we cannot define.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Peace
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 at Weirleigh, a house near the village of Matfield in Kent, and died on 1 September 1967 at Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, a week before his eighty-first birthday. He remains one of the defining literary witnesses of the First World War: a poet whose plain speech, anger, technical control, and mordant irony broke through the patriotic consolations of his age. Yet…
“I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, LGBTQ+ Poets, Political Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
