Ww1 poems by siegfried sassoon biography

Siegfried Sassoon was the product of two very different cultures, his Jewish father’s family of merchant princes from Baghdad and his English mother’s Thornycroft farming ancestors, turned sculptors, painters and engineers.

The second of three sons, he grew up in rural Kent, where his father abandoned the family before Siegfried was five, dying four years later.

Ww1 poems by siegfried sassoon biography

After a late entry into the school system Siegfried failed to complete his formal education at Cambridge, devoting himself instead over the next seven years to poetry, horses, cricket and golf. He was also coming to terms with his homosexuality, in an age which criminalized it.

When War was declared on 4 August 1914 Sassoon had already enlisted enthusiastically, first as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry, later transferring to the Royal Welch Fusiliers in May 1915.

The death of his younger brother in the Dardanelles in November 1915, his departure for the Western Front and his meeting with Robert Graves in France were sign