The First World War inspired a generation of young poets to write about its horrors with an immediacy and precision that the subject of earlier conflicts had not embraced. Maybe this was to do with the fact that 1914-1918 saw the introduction of trench warfare, and the appalling conditions and staggering numbers of casualties associated with it. Poets like Owen, Sassoon, Graves and Binyon ensured that the horrors would never be forgotten; but can today’s poets still bring them to light?
was written by a man whose pedigree suggests that he is the right person to try. Keith Jeffries, who lives in Tenerife in the Canary Islands, was born into a military family, having parents and grandparents who
