Siegfried Sassoon by Jean Moorcroft Wilson (1999, Paperback)

The World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon is one of the twentieth century's greatest icons and Jean Moorcroft Wilson is the leading authority on him. In Siegfried Sassoon: The Journey from the Trenches, the second volume of her best-selling, authorized biography, Wilson completes her definitive analysis of his life and works, exploring Sassoon's experiences after the Great War. For many people, Sassoon exists primarily as a First World War poet and bold fighter, who earned the nickname 'Mad Jack' in the trenches and risked Court Martial, possibly the firing squad, with his public protest against the War. Much less is known about his life after the Armistice. Wilson uncovers a series of love affairs with such larger-than-life characters as Queen Victoria's great-grandson, Prince Phillip of Hess, the flamboyant Ivor Novello and the exotic and bejewelled Hon. Stephen Tennant. This period also sees Sassoon establishing close friendships with some of the greatest literary figures of the age, Hardy, Beerbohm, E. M. Forster and T. E. Lawrence among them. Sassoon himself said that most people thought he had died in 1919. But Wilson shows that his poetry is, if anything, more powerful in the second half of his life. Based on a decade of meticulous research and interviews with many who knew Sassoon well, much of the material is published here for the first time. Siegfried Sassoon: The Journey from the Trenches completes a fascinating story that is beautifully told.