There is a sense of him to being quite nervous and that was the effect of the shop from a shell which we talked about in terms of Craig Lockhart his bad nerves. I think in terms of his shyness in some cases I guess it's added to that he was as Francis had five or five so there's a sense of it as a single little Owen. He talks about himself as the conscientious object who with the very seared conscience that he has to be guilty in order to write the way he does. The inscription chosen for his tomb is from one of his poems the end I assume it was chosen by his motherI meant yes shall life renew these bodies of a truth all death
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated British poet of World War One. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) had published only a handful of poems when he was killed a week before the end of the war, but in later decades he became seen as the essential British war poet. His works such as Anthem for Doomed Youth, Strange Meeting and Dulce et Decorum Est went on to be inseparable from the memory of the war and its futility. However, while Owen is best known for his poetry of the trenches, his letters offer a more nuanced insight into him such as his pride in being an officer in charge of others and in being a soldier who fought alongside his comrades.
With
Jane Potter
Reader in The School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University
Fran Brearton
Professor of Modern Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast
And
Guy Cuthbertson
Professor of British Literature and Culture at Liverpool Hope University
Producer: Simon Tillotson