First World War Poetry Digital Archive Oxford University

Short presentation as part of the Oxford 'British Poetry of the First World War' Spring School Short presentation as part of the Oxford 'British Poetry of the First World War' Spring School by Dr Stuart Lee (Oxford). Covers briefly some of the ore war literary movements, including the Georgians. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Lecture at the event 'Wilfred Owen: From Doomed Youth to the Battle of the Sambre'. Imperial War Museum, 10th November 2012. In this talk, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, presents Owen's full flowering as a late one. Fertilized by his meeting with Sassoon at Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers in August 1917 and nurtured by his own experiences of the 'pity of war', it died with Owen himself in one of the last Allied engagements in November 1917, the Battle of the Sambre. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Lecture on Siegfried Sassoon given at the Imperial War Museum, London, 12th November 2011. How did Siegfried Sassoon, whose first patriotic outpourings are almost more Brooke-like than those of Rupert Brooke himself, come to write the bitter war-satires for which he has become famous? Many factors went into the making of 'Mad Jack' - the death of his younger brother at Gallipoli in November 1915, the loss of his great love, David Thomas, and his 'dear' bombing sergeant, Mick O'Brian, in early 1916, and the first day of the Somme, which he witnessed on 1 July that same year. But it was the gruesome aftermath of the battle of Mametz Wood which finally brought home to him the grim realities of war. Presented by the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship with support from The Wilfred Owen Association. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

A discussion on the last phase of the First World War. A talk given at 'Wilfred Owen: From Doomed Youth to Battle of the Sambre', Imperial War Museum, 10th November 2012. Max Egremont, writer and lecturer asks: How bad was the Allies' position in the last months of 1917, after Ypres and Passchendaele? Was it possible to imagine defeat? Why was this transformed during 1918, after the huge German advances of the spring? Was there any truth in the Germans' 'stab in the back' claim that politicians had betrayed a still defiant military? The roots of the catastrophe of the 1930s are already apparent in the last year of the First World War. But can they be traced further back, even to 1914? Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Alisa Miller takes a look at the 'Rupert Brooke cult', examining why this particular poet was so popular during the First World War, both with the general public and the soldier, at home and abroad. This podcast has eminated from Alisa's dissertation at the Faculty of History, Oxford University on the poet Rupert Brooke and popular literary culture in Britain during the First World War. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Professor Tim Kendall considers what composer and poet Ivor Gurney understood by the phrase 'war poet' and how he saw his own work as belonging to (and eminent amidst) a tradition of writing about war. Tim Kendall examines the ways in which Gurney represents poetry, and the figure of the poet, in his own work; and assesses Gurney's hopes for the efficacy of such poetry - whether as acts of witness, of escapism, or of political intervention. Tim Kendall is Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter and editor of The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry (Oxford Handbooks of Literature) and author of Modern English War Poetry. The paper was presented at the First World War Literature, Music and Memory Conference held at King's College, Cambridge on the 11th and 12th July, 2009. Recording courtesy of Silvia Perucchetti.