Sassoon, Siegfried – The Bell Bookshop

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Emma — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As I stepped over one of the Germans an impulse made me lift him up from the miserable ditch. Propped against the bank, his blond face undisfigured, except by the mud which I wiped from his eyes and mouth with my coat sleeve. He’d evidently been killed while digging, for his tunic was knotted loosely about his shoulders. He didn’t look to be more than eighteen. Hoisting him a little higher, I thought what a gentle face he had, and remembered that this was the first time I’d ever touched one of our enemies with my hands. Perhaps I had some dim sense of the futility which had put an end to this good-looking youth. Anyhow I hadn’t expected the Battle of the Somme to be quite like this.

This first-hand account of the face of battle is as beautifully written as it is historically significant.

Poets Of The Great War: The War Poems

Emma — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

No poetry has touched readers’ hearts more deeply than the soldier poets of the First World War. Published to commemorate the centenary of 1914, this stunning set of books, with specially commissioned covers by leading print makers, is an essential gathering of our most beloved war poets introduced by leading poets and biographers of our present day.

‘In later years’, Sir Rupert Hart-Davis writes in his Introduction, ‘when Siegfried Sassoon had written much else in prose and verse, he was annoyed at always being referred to simply as a war poet, but it was the Great War that turned him into a poet of international fame, and I feel sure that his ghost will forgive me for thus bringing together these magnificently scarifying poems.’

The poems are arranged as far as possible in the order of their composition, and the reader can compare them with the poet’s movements by means of the Biographical Table which is included. Fourteen of the poems in this volume were published for the first time in the 1983 edition of this work.

Sassoon’s stature is now assured and recognised. This volume contains the poetry on which his reputation rests.

War Poems

Emma — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Siegfried Sassoon is one of the First World War poets whose poetry has defined a generation. He published most of his war poetry in The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter-Attack (1918). Chronologically ordered, the poems in this collection act as a timeline for the war, bringing to life the extraordinary experiences of soldiers in that conflict.

Collected Poems, 1908-56

Emma — Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 +0000

This volume contains poems which deal with nature, dreams, the past, music, consciousness, aging, ghosts, war, death, memory, and travel.