Robert Fisk on writing from World War I Nov 11, 2009
" ... Thin white lines of smoke, like poplars in a row, stood out against the horizon and I saw the flash of every German gun. My companions said that if the shells had been coming our way they would have gone over our heads; the German troops, he explained, must have come on unknown to them in the night, and he added he did not think that either the Belgians, the British, or the French knew at all what they were up to. So far as I can discover, this passage is the first indication in prose... (Sydney Morning Herald -- Opinion)
Fund to save Sassoon archive gains 550,000 boost Nov 4, 2009
A campaign to save the papers of World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon for the nation has been bolstered by a grant of 550,000 ... " SASSOON: SOLDIER AND POET Studied law at Clare College, Cambridge but dropped out in 1907 without a degree Lived the life of a country gentlemen before joining the military when war broke out Joined the 3rd Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers as second lieutenant and sent to France in 1915 Awarded Military Cross in 1916 and nicknamed "Mad Jack" by his platoon despite... (BBC News -- UK)
Top 10 Books Every College Student Should Read Sep 15, 2009
Siegfried Sassoon, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston Part of the impoverishment of the conservative mind these days is that it has no idea what it wants to conserve (or restore) in large part because so many conservatives don t bother to cultivate a conservative imagination by reading novels. Sassoon didn t become a political conservative (and a Catholic convert) until later life, but this brilliant, evocative, gentlemanly book shows a conservative society (which he loved) that produced a... (Human Events Online)
U-Z Oxford and Cambridge Writers an... Mar 23, 2009
Among these poets were Oxbridge educated Siegfried Sassoon (Clare College), who survived the war, and Edward Thomas (Lincoln College, Oxford), who fell in 1917. The deaths of men like this highlighted to the public the loss of a generation. (Suite101.com)
Tim Cook lands $25000 non-fiction award Feb 10, 2009
"It was those cemeteries - walking those cemeteries, walking by myself a lot of the time, looking at those gravestones, looking at the 18-year-old kids, or the 25-year-olds or the 55-year-olds, trying to understand what happened there." Later, in university, he was moved by the poetry - "those word pictures" - of such First World War writers as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. More Arts Stories. (Globe and Mail)
