Was the Great War Necessary? Nov 12, 2008
Along with the battles of Mons, Loos, the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele, and the writings of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and Edmund Blunden, the statistics are probably known to every sixth-former in the United Kingdom: the 60 percent casualty rate that tore apart the British Expeditionary Force (probably the best army Britain ever fielded) in the first three months of the war, the 60,000 casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the 723,000 British dead by... (The Atlantic Online)
Owen's enigma Nov 5, 2008
Wilfred Owen (with unknown boy) was heavily influenced by Siegfried Sassoon ... Yet today Wilfred Owen's poetic reputation has eclipsed many of those who once were better known, such as Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke ... "It was meeting Siegfried Sassoon in August 1917 that started him writing what he's known for now.". (BBC News -- Entertainment)
Poet palely loitering Sep 6, 2008
Within the first few minutes, he quotes Siegfried Sassoon and Wallace Simpson and goes on to Dr Johnson, Baudelaire, Sartre, Chekhov, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Hemingway, a roll-call of writers, reflecting a life spent with his nose in a book, not only at home, but during 20 years of working in bookshops. A couple of portraits in his memoir show Gray as a slender young man, palely loitering, with long, floppy hair and a taste for velvet jackets. (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
The Boulevard of the Allies Jun 29, 2008
The war spawned great novels that became great movies ("All Quiet on the Western Front," for example), great poems (by Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke) and great memoirs (those of Lawrence of Arabia and Winston Churchill, to start) but mostly great losses. In truth, no novel, no poem, is quite as moving, quite as devastating, as simply reading the names of the fallen, recorded on the polished white granite war memorials that stand in every village in Europe -- or on the walls of... (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PA)
Words of War May 28, 2008
There are novels such as All Quiet on the Western Front or memoirs like Robert Graves' Good-bye to All That, or poetry by people like Siegfried Sassoon that came out of the World War I experience in Europe. Europe had never experienced anything like that before. (DeKalb Daily Chronicle, IL)
College seminars inspire summer reading list May 24, 2008
Starting with the seminal war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, written from the German side, one seminar continues with Regeneration, a modern novel by Pat Barker about Siegfried Sassoon, a British poet who was actually sent to a military hospital after publicly declaring he would no longer fight. Is Sassoon a coward or simply smarter than all who died on the Western Front. (Coos Bay-North Bend The World, OR)
Novelists shine in Samuel Johnson non-fiction prize Apr 17, 2008
In a considerably lighter vein is Ferdinand Mount's Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes, his account of growing up in his parents' "hobohemian" milieu among the likes of Anthony Powell and Siegfried Sassoon. Northern Ireland's Troubles are the subject of two very personal stories: Kevin Myers' Watching the Door, which recounts his experiences as a reporter among loyalist and republican terrorists; and Jonathan Powell's Great Hatred, Little Room, an insider's account of the tense... (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Happy warrior, embittered pacifist Mar 18, 2008
From the outside, Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) would seem to be the man who had everything: tall, handsome, rich, talented, well connected, educated at Marlborough and Cambridge - the world was his proverbial oyster. Appearances can be deceptive, however, and Sassoon's personality was untypically complex. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
* [BOOK REVIEW] All's fair in love and war Mar 2, 2008
With her new novel, Life Class, Pat Barker returns to the subject of World War I - a subject that earned her immense acclaim in the 1990s with her Regeneration trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road), an artful improvisation on the lives of the poets Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves and their compatriots, which unfurled into a fierce meditation on the horrors of war and its psychological aftermath. After several intriguing but lumpy novels set in the present... (Taipei Times, Taiwan -- World)
Comment: Catherine Bennett Feb 3, 2008
We shall just have to hope the soldiers, for their part, don't have inside their heads some version of Siegfried Sassoon: 'You smug faced crowds with kindling eye/ Who cheer when soldier lads march by,/ Sneak home and pray you'll never know/ The hell where youth and laughter go. . (Guardian Unlimited)
Young lovers learn to say goodbye to all that Jan 27, 2008
Drawing on the war journals of the famous neurologist William H. R. Rivers and the poetry and biographies of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Barker created a fictional tableau as searing in its intimacy as it was convincing. Opening in London in the spring of 1914, "Life Class," too, returns to the front, and to the primary sources of both the war and the artists who graced (or languished in) the studios and salons of London during those blue-lit years. (Boston Globe)
The Art of War Jan 27, 2008
While the novel covers some of the same ground including battleground as Barker s superb Regeneration Trilogy, with historical figures again mingling with invented ones and artists substituted for the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Life Class is lighter fare. Concentrating more on the turmoil of love than the trauma of war, it is rendered with the quick hand of a sketch rather than the textured layering of an oil painting. (New York Times)
All together now, US troops stand firm Jan 10, 2008
Like Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon during World War I, they feel obliged to remain with their men, regardless of personal views on the war, knowing that their experience will save some of their men's lives. During World War II, combat units were made up of young men, conscripts and volunteers, who had been posted to one of the divisions being assembled according to General Marshal's mobilization plan. (Asia Times Online)
Obituary: Vernon Scannell Nov 19, 2007
This would include just published volumes of writers' memoirs or letters (as the author of several volumes of candid autobiography, Scannell was fascinated by "lives"), old favourites such as Siegfried Sassoon, new novels and work by younger poets. Sometimes, there would also arrive in a letter a new poem of his own, because the last two years saw a revival of Scannell's creative energies. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
News in brief Nov 3, 2007
Painted in 1884 when Agatha was 20, the portrait was once owned by Siegfried Sassoon, the subject's nephew. It has been bought by Andrew Leah, tenant of Hardy's former home, Max Gate in Dorchester. (Guardian Unlimited -- UK)
The beautiful and the damned Sep 29, 2007
No previous youth movement had been so hospitable to homosexuals: Howard and the my-dearing Gathorne-Hardy were the last word in period flamboyance, while Stephen Tennant's relationship with the much older Siegfried Sassoon was the talk of the Mayfair drawing rooms. It was also a reliable nursery for young men on the make: middle-class adventurers such as Waugh (a London publisher's son) and his arch-enemy Cecil Beaton, who used the connections they made at blue-blooded cocktail parties to forge... (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Pete Doherty: The Last Libertine Jul 12, 2007
Doherty, inspired by the wonder of William Blake and his idyllic Albion, to the words of Oscar Wilde, to the war poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, as well as the punk theory of The Clash, the melodies of The Beatles and the tortured genius of Morrissey. Doherty, saved british music at it's time of need. (Suite101.com)
Q&A: curriculum reform Jul 12, 2007
The issue explained: Secondary school curriculum reform. Donald MacLeod looks at what 11 to 14-year-old pupils can expect to learn under the latest reforms to the secondary school curriculum. (Guardian Unlimited -- UK)
Which books capture their era? Jul 3, 2007
In the decade of the Great War, the favourite reading of the troops was often poetry, but neither Siegfried Sassoon nor Wilfred Owen nor Edward Thomas really qualifies as a zeitgeist author. In fact, it was another thriller, also inspired by the threat of invasion, that became the forces' favourite on the Western Front. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
The last survivor of Passchendaele Jul 1, 2007
The war poet Siegfried Sassoon gave it the epitaph: 'I died in hell - they called it Passchendaele. . (Guardian Unlimited -- UK)
Double vision Jun 30, 2007
Beginning with an account of the relationship between the poet Siegfried Sassoon and the pioneering psychiatrist WHR Rivers, and opening out to become a portrait of a generation devastated by the first world war, this meticulously researched and emotionally subtle work remains Barker's masterpiece. Life Class is a kind of postscript. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
• Rare Gifts Rain On Yale Jun 26, 2007
For his 30th reunion this spring, William Reese, a bookseller in New Haven, donated his Siegfried Sassoon collection. Sassoon was a World War I military officer, poet and war hero who publicly criticized the war while it was still in progress. (FOX61, CT)
Raise the fighting age May 30, 2007
A poem by Siegfried Sassoon, written in the trenches of World War I, seems to apply. "I knew a simple soldier boy/Who grinned at life in empty joy,/Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,/And whistled early with the lark.". (North County Times)
'Perfect Summer' reading May 25, 2007
It was "one of those specially remembered summers, from which one evolves a consistent impression of commingled happiness," remembered the poet Siegfried Sassoon. "Sitting under the Irish yew, we seemed to have forgotten that there was such a thing as the future." Grade: A. (Christian Science Monitor)
War poet's medal turns up in attic May 11, 2007
The medal, presented to Siegfried Sassoon and thought to have been thrown away 90 years ago in disgust at the slaughter of the first world war, is expected to fetch up to 25,000 when it comes up for auction at Christie's in London next month. "Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land," wrote Sassoon in Dreamers in 1917, "Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows." The medal and his leather military identification tag are likely to be the subject of heavy bidding from admirers of the writer,... (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Lost treasure: military cross found on Mull after 90 years May 11, 2007
Siegfried Sassoon received the Military Cross for his bravery on the Western Front, but for years it was believed he had thrown the medal into a river in protest. Now, 90 years later, the medal has been found in a treasure chest in the attic of a family house on Mull. (The Herald)
Blair's departure dominates press May 10, 2007
The Daily Express is one of several papers to report the discovery in an attic of a medal won in the Great War by poet Siegfried Sassoon. The theory, it says, was that he threw his Military Cross into the Mersey in protest at the futility of war. (BBC News -- UK)
Sassoon's lost medal found on Scottish island after 90 years May 10, 2007
In the trenches of the First World War, anti-war poet Siegfried Sassoon's bravery earned him the nickname 'Mad Jack', and he was awarded the Military Cross Picture: PA ... WALKING near the Merseyside village of Formby in 1917, Siegfried Sassoon's rising frustration with the staggering loss of life in the First World War saw him shake his clenched fists at the sky ... " Sassoon is best known for his book Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, chronicling his journey as a young man from English country... (Scotsman)
King of the Plastic Rambos May 8, 2007
Rereading Siegfried Sassoon s great poem of World War I, the sense is overwhelming that it was a vision of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. His eerie, uncrackable arrogance and unwavering faith in his own genius have so far cost the lives of more than 3,000 American soldiers and maimed more than 22,000. (The American Conservative)
Contrary to opinion: it's fine by the minister Feb 19, 2007
" His priority, before the May budget, is to finalise a film-industry package aimed at increasing private investment in film and TV. The package, thought to be worth $60 million, may involve the merger of the Australian Film Commission and Film Finance Corporation Australia. Favourite things Books: He owns at least 3000, among them about 150 old or rare editions. Latest book read: the final volume of Robert Skidelsky's three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes. Movies: Billy Elliot "for the... (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
Meanwhile: In northern France, anthem for doomed youth Feb 9, 2007
on in Paris, but there can be few more fitting backdrops for the work of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas and their contemporaries. The blood of three generations of soldiers stains its clay soil. (International Herald Tribune -- Ed/Op)
Review: Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's "Dunkirk" Jan 27, 2007
The author's own cousin, Denzil SebagMontefiore, may have been one of the few Jewish platoon commanders on those gruesome beaches, but like Siegfried Sassoon before him, he conducted himself with distinctive insouciance. He shared his Fortnum food hamper with his men, who repaid the kindness by heaving him into a boat (after he had lightened himself by tossing away his engraved ivory hairbrushes). (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
