Author Description

This anthology of 250 war poems was first published in 1988 to coincide with the 70th Anniversary of the Armistice of 1918. They range from Homer and the Bible to John Betjeman, Randell Jarrell, James Fenton and Roy Fuller by way of Chaucer, Coleridge, Emily Dickinson and Hardy to name a few of the poets included. The selection is arranged chronologically by conflict, to produce a history of warfare as seen by some of the most eloquent observers and chroniclers of its effects. It reveals the shift of social awareness of the state of war and includes a selection from the classics, medieval poetry and poetry of the Civil War and the 18th and 19th centuries, plus a scrutiny of the two World Wars and Vietnam, violence in Northern Ireland and El Salvador ending with visions of the "next war". Jon Stallworthy is editor of the "Penguin Book of Love Poetry". His biography "Wilfred Owen" won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the W.H. Smith Literary Award and the E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.