The Red Sweet Wine of Youth: The Brave and Brief Lives of the War Poets by Murray, Nicholas - 2010

UK: Little, Brown, 2010. 750g, 343 crisp pp, 2 photo sections. The poetry that emerged from the trenches of WWI is a remarkable body of work, at once political manifesto and literary beacon for the twentieth century. In this passionate recreation of the lives of the greatest poets to come out of the conflict, Nicholas Murray brilliantly reveals the men themselves as well as the struggle of the artist to live fully and to bear witness in the annihilating squalor of battle. Bringing into sharp focus the human detail of each life, using journals, letters and literary archives, Murray brings to life the men's indissoluble comradeship, their complex sexual mores and their extraordinary courage. Poignant, vivid and unfailingly intelligent, Nicholas Murray's study offers new and finely tuned insight into the - often devastatingly brief - lives of a remarkable generation of men. reviewer says >>> - I found the entire volume incredibly informative. The book contains twelve poets in all - Julian Grenfell, Rupert Brooke, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Siegfried Sassoon, dear Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Ivor Gurney, Edward Thomas, Edmund Blunden, David Jones and T.E. Hulme - such heroic men, and such a terrible loss. - The information throughout was set out marvellously, and I liked the way in which Murray had sorted the poets into distinct sections, based on influences or the whereabouts of the soldiers in the First World War, for example. about the author >> Nicholas Murray is the acclaimed biographer of Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold (Hodder), Andrew Marvell, Aldous Huxley and Kafka and, most recently, a book about Victorian travel, A Corkscrew is Most Useful.. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good/Good. 24cm.