Siegfried Sassoon
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The life of Siegfried Sassoon has been recorded and interpreted in literature and film for over half a century. He is one of the great figures of the First World War, and Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer are still widely read, as are his poems, which did much to shape our present ideas about the Great War.
Sassoon was a genuine hero, a brave young officer who also became the war's most famous opponent, risking imprisonment and even a death sentence by throwing his Military Cross into the Mersey. He was friend to Robert Graves, mentor to Wilfred Owen and much admired by Churchill. But Sassoon was more than the embodiment of a romantic ideal; he was in many senses the perfect product of a vanished age. And many questions about his character, unique experience and motivations have remained unanswered until now.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like his critics, Siegfried Sassoon (1886 1967) suspected that it was WWI that gave his writing relevance and saved him from obscurity as a poet. Therefore, until his death, the British Sassoon oscillated between loathing and searching for the camaraderie and inspiration that he'd found in the trenches. In his attempts at escaping the war, Sassoon, a homosexual, went as far as marriage, fatherhood and the establishment of a traditional country estate. Meanwhile, he connected to the war by writing autobiographical novels: "George Sherston, is Siegfried Sassoon with almost all the unusual, some might say the most interesting, bits left out. We get the diffidence, the self-deprecating humor, the love of country life, the sporting courage and the sensibility, without the sexual torment, the Jewishness, the poetry or Robert Graves." In addition to relying on solid critical interpretations of Sassoon's writings, Egremont draws on unprecedented access to notes, drafts and correspondence, as well as the diaries of Sassoon's lover, Stephen Tennant. Their affair is one of the highlights of the book, where Sassoon appears most sympathetic, charming and talented. Egremont remains skeptical of his subject's greatness but his substantial (if not always artful) journey through this material illuminates the reasons why such a figure is worth honoring.
