Poetry and World War One
World War One more than any other war is associated with the so-called ‘war poets’. The poems written by men
such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke, amongst others, is as poignant today as it was both
during the war and immediately after it.
World War Two did not produce such a flow of poetry targeted at the lifestyle of those who fought in the war. It
is probable that the sheer scale, horror and futility of World War One spurred on already gifted and talented
writers who had answered their nation’s call to arms. Some, like Brookes, joined up as he was caught up in a
wave of patriotism that swept through Great Britain. The overall belief was that World War One would be over
by Christmas 1914 and a vast number of young men did not want to miss ‘the fun’. Their naïve outlook was
quickly shattered as they arrived at the frontline and experienced trench warfare. It was the lifestyle they lived
that spurred on the war poets. They put onto paper what many others thought. Sassoon wrote about the “Gate”
and the men who marched through it to go and fight in the Battle of Ypres or in the battles that surrounded the
town.
There was no standard blueprint for a war poet – even if the common perception is that they were all officers
from a privileged background. This was clearly not the case. The War Poets were from a variety of backgrounds.
Some such as Brookes had a very comfortable upbringing. Others such as Lance-Corporal Ledwidge came from
more humble stock. Some won medals for gallantry. Others did not. The whole variety of backgrounds gives a
clear idea that the impact of war in the trenches hit everyone who served there. Forbidden from writing home
with any degree of accuracy/truth about the life they led, some put their thoughts into a diary that could be
kept in secret. Some of these diaries survive to this day. Others put their thoughts into poems. As many of these
poems rely on interpretation as opposed to being clear facts, the poets bypassed any form of military censorship
that certainly would have occurred if they had simply written out their thoughts as prose.
The poets also came from a variety of religious backgrounds. The majority were from traditional Church of
England backgrounds. Three of the more famous poets – Sassoon, Rosenberg and Frankau – were Jewish.
Frankau and Sassoon were to convert to Roman Catholicism. Vera Brittain was a “sceptic”. What united them all
regardless of their faiths was the fact that they all started to question the whole aspect of God – if a God existed
He could never allow such horror; if He did exist, why did allow men to suffer so much? Sassoon in particular
became more and more a harsh critic of the men who pushed religion onto the ranks. They made him “love
religion less and less”.
The majority of war poets were influenced by the ‘Georgian’ poetry movement. The accepted leader of this
movement was Edward Marsh who owned a poetry bookshop in London. He was also a patron of a number of
young poets who were yet to make their names, as the war was some years off. The name ‘Georgian’ came from
the reigning king – George. The ‘Georgian’ poets considered themselves to be modern and innovative. They had
their supporters, such as T S Elliott (“they caress everything they touch”), and at the least they were seen as
being more relevant than the late Victorian poets. Many of the war poets were keen readers of classic poetry
from Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece. The works of Shakespeare was also popular amongst them.
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen became one of the most famous war poets of
World War One. Like so many others in the British Army, Wilfred
Owen was killed in battle but his poetry remains an enduring
legacy of his thoughts and emotions about the war – raging
against armchairs generals but in praise of those who actually
fought at the front.
Wilfred Owen was born on March 18th 1893 in Oswestry,
Shropshire. He was the eldest of four children; he had two
brothers, Harold and Colin, and a sister, Mary.
In 1897 the family moved to Merseyside. By 1906 the family had
moved back to Shropshire when work commitments caused his
father to move to Shrewsbury where he worked as an Assistant
Superintendent on the railways. Owen went to a local school
where he quickly demonstrated an interest in the arts, especially
the poetry of Keats. He probably started writing poetry at the age
of 17. He failed to gain a resident place at the Universities of
London and Reading. To raise money for a correspondence course
at London University, Owen worked for a year as a lay assistant to
a vicar, the Reverend Herbert Wiggin, who had a parish near
Reading. What Owen found most marked about his time doing
this work, was the stark contrast in lifestyle between Wiggin’s and
many of his parishioners. The reverend lived alone in a large
vicarage while very many in the parish were poor and lived in one
room hovels. It was probably at this time that Owen developed
sympathy for the poor and those who had little or nothing – the
underdog. This sympathy was to be shown again during his time
in the army for those at the front – the pbi – poor, bloody infantry.
He moved to Bordeaux to teach at the Berlitz School of English. Here Owen fell under the influence of the French
poet Laurent Tailhade. Owen started to experiment with unusual styles of writing poetry and came up with his
‘vowel-rhyme stunt’. He was also literally miles away from his domineering mother and his letters clearly state
that for the first time, he openly enjoyed himself and took to drinking wine and smoking.
At the start of the war, Owen visited wounded French soldiers at a hospital at Baignères. He not only wrote
about what he saw but also drew in great and graphic details the wounds he saw. In later years, his critics used
this to claim that Owen had voyeuristic tendencies and that this crept into his most famous verses in the form of
him exaggerating the whole pity that surrounded war in the trenches.
In September 1915, Owen returned to England and signed up in the Artists’ Rifles on October 20 th. By now he
had convinced himself that only by fighting the ‘Bosh’ was he going to do his bit “to save the language of Keats
and Shakespeare”. Owen had developed a fear that a German victory in the war would destroy the English
language. He managed to join up despite being 5 feet 5 inches tall – in 1914 he would have failed the height
required for military service.
Owen trained in London where he lodged over the ‘Poetry Bookshop’. Here he befriended its owner, Harold
Munro, who encouraged Owen to develop his poetry.
In June 1916 he received his commission in the 5th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment and spent the rest of
the year in training. Owen arrived in Étaples, France on December 30 th – “in perfect spirits”. He found the men
he was to lead rough, uncultured and uncouth. However, Owen found that he gained the respect of his men
because he proved to be a very good shot with most infantry weapons. It was a curious combination – a man
who desired to be a poet who was deadly with a rifle, machine gun and pistol.
Owen’s first taste of battle was in January 1917 when he and his men had to hold out for 50 hours in a flooded
dug-out in No-Man’s-Land in while being heavily bombarded by German artillery – a position now identified as
being near Serre Number 2 Cemetery. Owen simply referred to the area as a “sad land”. His time in this dugout
undoubtedly changed Owen. He had seen his training at Étaples as a ‘laugh’ and his letters home hint at the
jollity in his life while training. However, he was now “in front of the front line” with orders not to pull back
under any circumstances. A German shell landed near the dugout and shrapnel hit one of his men who was on
sentry duty. His poem “The Sentry” is an account of his time in the dugout.
In March Owen received minor injuries after falling into a cellar in the dark but was back on the front line in
April. In May he was hit by a shell explosion at Savy Bank and spent several days in a railway embankment. The
same explosion killed his best friend ‘Cock Robin’ and this had a devastating impact on him. When Owen was
rescued his colleagues noticed that he was behaving in a strange manner and he was diagnosed with shell shock.
In the early years of the war, senior officers did not recognise shell shock and some men were executed for
cowardice as a result. However, as the war moved on shell shock became a recognised disorder. Owen was later
evacuated from the war front. In June, Owen convalesced in Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh under
the supervision of Dr. A J Brock.
While some hospitals used electric shock therapy to treat shell shock, Brock did not. He believed in occupational
therapy. Men under him did gardening, looked after animals etc. Brock encouraged Owen to write. He became
editor of the hospital’s own magazine, “The Hydra”. Brock wanted Owen to rediscover his creativity. When
Brock found out that Owen wrote poetry, he encouraged him to continue with this while in hospital.
It was while Owen was in hospital that he met Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon read his poetry and encouraged him
to continue with it. While convalescing, Owen wrote much of the poetry for which he is famous, including
‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. As a result of his friendship with Sassoon, he met and communicated with men
such as Robert Graves, H G Wells and Arnold Bennett. While he seemingly got on well with these men, he did
not befriend the female poet Jessie Pope, whose jingoistic poetry extolling the virtues of gloriously dying for
your country was anathema to Owen.
His relationship with Sassoon fundamentally changed the way he wrote poetry. Owen was in awe of Sassoon as
was shown when Sassoon changed the title of one of Owen’s most famous poems. Owen had used the title
“Anthem to Dead Youth” because of the finality of what so many young men could expect. On the original,
Sassoon crossed out the word “Dead” and replaced it with “Doomed”. Owen accepted the change seemingly
without question and the poem became “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. Sassoon also gave Owen a simple piece
of advice with regards to writing poetry: “Sweat your guts out.”
In the spring of 1918, Owen released a short book of the poems he had written. The preface to the collection
starts: “This book is not about heroes.” The preface also contains: “My subject is war and the pity of war; the
poetry is in the pity.” The poems in the collection were blunt and told about warfare as it was, not sparing the
reader nor glossing over the nastiness of what Owen had observed. While well received by the literary world, it
would be many more years before these poems received the acclaim that they now get.
In June 1918 Owen was past fit and he rejoined his regiment and in August as the war was moving towards it
end, he was sent to France.
Owen was awarded the Military Cross for bravery while in action near Amiens. His citation read:
“For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on 1 st/2nd October 1918. On
the company commander becoming a casualty he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a
heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun in an isolated position and
inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.”
Wilfred Owen was killed on November 4th while leading his men into battle at the Sambre-Oise Canal. His unit
had been ordered to cross the canal and engage the enemy. He had been told that there should be “no
retirement under any circumstances.” His unit tried to cross the canal on cork pontoons and they were cut to
pieces by well dug in German machine guns.
Wilfred Owen is buried at the CWGC cemetery at Ors. He was 25 when he died.
His parents received news of his death on November 11th – Armistice Day.
The poems of Wilfred Owen are well known but he has not found total support from those in the same
‘profession’. Owen’s was posthumously criticised for immersing the reader in nothing but pity and some, such as
Adrian Caesar, believed that all Owen did was to concentrate on the misery of war and failed to examine other
aspects of warfare such as comradeship and acts of bravery. As a result, Caesar wrote that his poems had “an air
of unremitting artificiality” about them. In 1936, W B Yeats deliberately omitted Owen from an entry in the
‘Oxford Book of Modern Verse’ believing that Owen only had one story to tell. Yeat’s also believed that Owen
had been too concerned about his own personal advancement to make his poems truly authentic about life for
soldiers in World War One. However, the anti-war movement of the early 1960’s latched onto his poems and
just over 45 years after his death he found the fame his mother had so desired for him.
Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke was a famous poet from World
War One. Brooke was for years probably the
most pre-eminent war poet from that era and
was feted along with the likes of Wilfred Owen
and Siegfried Sassoon.
Rupert Brooke was born on August 3rd 1887.
His father was a teacher at Rugby school and
Brooke was to spend five years there. He
gained a reputation for being artistic but also
as someone who excelled at sport. In 1906
Brooke won a scholarship to King’s College,
Cambridge. A contemporary of his at King’s,
Frances Cornford, described Brooke as “a
young Apollo”. He had a glittering array of
friends at Cambridge – E M Forster, Virginia
Woolf and Cornford. He knew Hugh Dalton and
for a while dabbled in socialist politics.
In 1910 he stood in for his recently deceased
father at Rugby. He worked at the school for a
term and then returned to Cambridge to
continue his work on English authors. When he
was not doing this he travelled and wrote
poetry. His first collection of poems was
published in December 1911, and simply called
“Poems”.
In 1912 Brookes spent more time travelling in Europe. After recovering from a mystery illness that caused him to
return to Rugby, Brookes continued his travels and went to Berlin. Here he wrote ‘The Sentimental Exile’. His
friend Edward Marsh persuaded Brookes to change the title to ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’ and it became
his most famous pre-war poem.
Brooke was awarded a fellowship from King’s College in March 1913 for his dissertation on Webster. Between
May 1913 and June 1914 he travelled around the world for the ‘Westminster Gazette’, which paid him £4 a time
for his impressions of the various countries he visited – Canada, America, various Pacific islands and New
Zealand. He wrote fifteen articles for the ‘Westminster Gazette’ and when he returned he found that his literary
star shone brightly and he was very much the centre of attention in London’s literary scene.
However, in June war with Germany seemed inevitable. His long-term friend Edward Marsh now worked for
Winston Churchill at the Admiralty. Marsh introduced Brookes to Churchill and the First Lord of the Admiralty
offered to help Brookes get a commission. Brookes could not make up his mind but decided that it was his duty
to do so – “If Armageddon is on, I suppose one should be there.”
Brookes got a commission in the Royal Naval Division – a land based unit. In late September Brookes did some
training in Kent and in October, along with his platoon, he embarked for France. His unit, the Anson Battalion,
Royal Naval Division, was ordered to move into Belgium to help stem the German advance on Antwerp. They
came up against a flow of fleeing Belgian soldiers and refugees. Brookes and his men were temporarily based at
a chateau at Vieux-Dieu. After they had moved out to some Belgian trenches, the chateau was hit by German
artillery. The whole unit was ordered to withdraw and after catching a train to Ostend, they made their way
back to Dover by October 9th. It had not been a particularly glorious introduction to the war.
The writings of Brookes at this time in the war were typically patriotic. He wrote that fighting the Germans was
what God wanted him to do; he considered his previous ‘life’ of study and travelling as frivolous. In particular he
felt that the Belgian people had been wronged by the German government and set out to correct this wrong.
Brooke’s spent the November 1914 at Blandford in Dorset. He spent his time training. When Brookes was not
doing this, he wrote sonnets. Over the New Year of 1914/1915, Brookes stayed at Walmer Castle in Kent or back
at Rugby. In February 1915, while recovering from a feverish cold, Brookes spent nine days recovering at 10,
Downing Street.
On February 20th 1915, Brookes found out that his unit was bound for Gallipoli. He wrote, “I have never been so
happy.” It seems that the whole idea of fighting to relieve Constantinople appealed to the romantic side in him.
However, he and his men never reached Gallipoli. After various stop-offs and delays that included a visit to the
Pyramids. Brookes landed at Lemnos. He fell ill and the medical staff attached to his unit diagnosed an infection
caused by a mosquito bite. Despite help from a French medical team, nothing could be done for Brookes and he
died on April 23rd 1915. Three days later Winston Churchill wrote in ‘The Times’:
“He was all that one would wish England’s noblest sons to be in the days when no sacrifice but the most
precious is acceptable
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon was one of the great poets from
World War One. The poetry from the likes of Sassoon
and Wilfred Owen seemed to many to be an apt
summary of the horrors that many had experienced
during the war.
Siegfried Sassoon was born on September 8th 1886 in
Kent. Born into a reasonably well-off family, Sassoon
was educated at Marlborough College and Clare
College, Cambridge University where he studied Law
and History. However, he left university before
graduating but had discovered a love for the poetry of
Tennyson and Yeats. Up until the outbreak of the
war, Sassoon spent his time living a life of leisure –
fox hunting, playing cricket and riding point-to-point.
Encouraged by Edward Marsh to write poetry,
Sassoon moved to London to immerse himself in
literature. He rented out an apartment and in July
1914 met Rupert Brooke there. Though he was short
of money and soon in debt, it was the type of
experience that he was looking for.
However, the war changed all this.
Sassoon enlisted on August 2nd 1914. He joined the
Sussex Yeomanry. However, while training he had an
accident riding a horse that resulted in a badly broken
right arm, which delayed his move to the front. After
recovering from this, he was given a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (May 1915) and as a 2nd Lieutenant
he served with both the 1st and 2nd Battalions. His poetry from this time tends to be patriotic and comments on
the nobler aspects of war. In later years he was to criticise these poems as being too glorifying.
The death of his brother at Gallipoli in November 1915 and a good friend, David Thomas in March 1916, brought
home to Sassoon the full impact of war. However, rather than adopt a passive approach, the two deaths seemed
to have spurred Sassoon on to what can only be described as acts of revenge. He went out on patrol in NoMan’s-Land when no patrols were planned and such acts of recklessness led to him gaining the nickname ‘Mad
Jack’ from his men. Sassoon wrote about longing to meet a German patrol and attacking it with grenades and
cudgels.
Such dangerous acts were only curbed by Sassoon being sent to the Fourth Army School at Flixécourt for four
weeks. These four weeks away from the front line calmed down Sassoon. In late June 1916, he was awarded the
Military Cross for his bravery and leadership in bringing back to British trenches men who had been wounded in
a raid on a German trench. The death from his injuries of one of these men, Corporal O’Brien, deeply affected
Sassoon who had known O’Brien for some time.
Sassoon played no part in the Battle of the Somme, which started on the day after he received his Military Cross.
His unit was held in reserve at Kingston Road. Sassoon caught trench fever and was sent home by a sympathetic
doctor who had just read about his MC in ‘The Times’. After convalescing at home, he was passed fit on
December 4th and sent back to France in February 1917. However, within two days he caught German measles
and spent ten days in a hospital in Rouen.
Sassoon’s unit was held in reserve for the Battle of Arras but he was wounded at Tunnel Trench during the
Battle of Scarpe where a German sniper shot him between the shoulders.
It was during this period of convalescence that the patriotism and enthusiasm that he had shown in the early
years of the war started to disappear. He wrote poems that condemned senior officers and the way they ran the
war. Sassoon also wrote his ‘Declaration’ in this time and sent it – a statement of wilful defiance – to his colonel.
Fully expecting to be punished for this, he was only saved by Robert Graves who also served in the Welch
Fusiliers. Graves managed to persuade the higher echelons of the Welch Fusiliers that rather than punish
Sassoon, they should offer him support. As a result he was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland (which
Sassoon called ‘Dottyville’) suffering from shell shock. While here Sassoon wrote a lot of poetry and also met
Wilfred Owen who was also convalescing. It was Sassoon who encouraged Owen to continue with his efforts.
After four months convalescing at Craiglockhart, Sassoon was deemed fit enough to return to General Service.
After a short spell in Palestine (January to February 1918), Sassoon was posted to France where he served on the
front line. Despite being a company commander, he continued to show some of the recklessness that he had
shown in 1915. Along with a corporal he attacked a German position at St. Floris and was wounded in the head
(July 13th 1918). He was invalided back to England to convalesce. Sassoon was given indefinite sick leave and,
despite maintaining his commission, he never went on active service again.
In March 1919, Sassoon resigned his commission and left the army.
Most of his war poems were comments on what life was like at home in England amongst those who were not
experiencing the horrors of the war in France and Belgium. In particular he saved some of his greatest criticism
for those who he believed were profiting from the war though a few of his poems were openly critical of those
who commanded the army.
After the war, Sassoon spent a great deal of time writing his autobiography. The six volumes took from 1928 to
1945 to complete.
He died on September 1st 1967.
Act of Willful Defiance
Appalled by the slaughter on the trenches, Siegfried
Sassoon wrote his Act of Willful Defiance as a
statement that he was not going to return to arms.
Sassoon had gained a reputation as a poet by the
time he took this decision so if such an act gained
mass publicity, especially as it was titled 'Willful
Defiance', it would have been a major
embarrassment to the army and
government. Sassoon did, in fact, put himself in
danger of being court-martialled and if found guilty
could have faced severe punishment. His friend and
fellow officer Rober Graves persuaded the military
hierarchy that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock
and he was sent to recover in Scotland where he met
Wilfred Owen who was recovering in the same
hospital. It was here at Craiglockheart that Sassoon
urged the unknown Owen to put his heart and soul
into his poems.
"I am making this statement as an act of willful
defiance of military authority because I believe that
the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who
have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced
that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that
the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and
liberation has now become a war of aggression and
conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and
my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have
been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects
which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these
sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but
against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced
upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at
home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not have enough
imagination to realise."
Robert Graves
Robert Graves became one of the foremost poets of World War One. Graves went on to achieve even greater
fame not through his poetry but as a result of his book about his war times experiences “Goodbye To All That”.
Along with Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brookes, Robert Graves is considered to have been one
of the few poets who were capable of putting onto paper the sheer horror of trench warfare.
Robert Graves was born on July 28th 1895. His father, ‘A P’, was from Irish stock while his mother, Amalia (Amy),
had a German family. Whereas his father was seen as being witty, light-hearted and amenable, his mother was
very serious and viewed by those who knew her as lacking a sense of humour.
After a series of prep schools, Graves went to Charterhouse. While at this school, Graves became very
influenced by a teacher there called George Mallory – the man who died in 1924 in his ascent of Mount Everest.
Mallory imparted in Graves a love of literature, and poetry in particular. Graves wrote poetry for the school
magazine, which he later co-edited.
Graves won a classical exhibition to St. John’s College, Oxford University. In his spare time he developed his
poetry or, encouraged by Mallory, he developed a keen interest in climbing and mountaineering.
In 1914, when war was declared, Graves gained a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers – using his time in the
Charterhouse OTC to justify this. His war experience started by looking after interned aliens at a camp in
Lancaster. Though Graves wanted to go to France, his commanding officer believed that he was not yet of the
right calibre to embark on such a journey having only recently come out of school. A boxing match against a
hardened NCO convinced his c/o that Graves was, perhaps, now ready for war.
However, he was not sent until May 1915 and he served with the 2nd Welsh Regiment. Graves commanded a
platoon of forty men. According to the stories told in ‘Goodbye To All That’, one of his men was a 63 years old
survivor of the Boer War while several were boy soldiers aged 15. In July 1915, Graves was sent to join the Royal
Welch Fusiliers at Laventie. While here, he recorded in his book that the officers in the RWF failed to take the
war seriously and saw that to them it was far more important to keep up regimental traditions. These traditions
Graves referred to as “childish”.
The first real war experience that Graves had was at the Battle of Loos. What Graves referred to as a “bloody
balls-up” resulted in only five company officers from the RWF surviving. The poem ‘The Dead Fox Hunter, In
Memory of Captain L. Samson’ was written about this battle.
In November 1915 Graves met Siegfried Sassoon at Locon, north of Cambrin. Sassoon was to write about Graves
in ‘Memoirs of an Infantry Soldier’ where he appeared as David Cromlech – a man who believed everyone
should know his opinion and whose appearance was ‘deplorably untidy’. Despite writing that Cromlech would
grow up into a “bumptious young prig”, Sassoon greatly respected Graves. While at the front they tried to forget
about the war by discussing literature, especially poetry.
After leave when he spent time in the hills around Harlech, Graves returned to France on June 27 th 1916 with the
rank of captain. He arrived too late to be involved in the first days of the Battle of the Somme. In the second
week of July he moved in to the Somme battlefield – near to Mametz Wood where the 38th Welsh Division had
suffered many casualties. He had to camp near to where many bodies still lay on the battlefield – “a certain cure
for the lust of blood”.
On July 19th, Graves was severely injured at High Wood when a German shell exploded and fragments from it hit
Graves in the chest. Graves was, in fact, given up for dead and he survived being buried as a war casualty when
he was seen breathing while being carried to his burial. His parents even received a letter informing them of his
death – one day after receiving a letter from Graves himself informing them that he was recovering from his
wounds. The whole incident is recalled in the poem “Escape”.
The wounds Graves received at High Wood did a great deal to test his nerves. Graves was pronounced as being
unfit for duty and was given time on leave. He was sent to Oxford University where he worked as an instructor
in the University Officer Training Battalion. During this time he met up with Sassoon just as the latter was
publishing his “Wilful Defiance”. Graves used his contacts in the RWF to ensure that Sassoon was treated as
someone with what would now be referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder. Had Graves not done this,
Sassoon could have been in very serious trouble and could have faced a court martial.
While Graves is best known for “Goodbye To All That”, he also wrote poetry that showed very clearly his close
association to the men he led – and to those who died. In 1916, he had published “Over the Brazier” and in the
following year “Fairies and Fusiliers”. After the war Graves effectively ignored these works.
Post-war, Graves found fame for his autobiography and for ‘I Claudius’ and ‘Claudius the God’.
Robert Graves died in 1985.