Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated British poet of World War One. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) had published only a handful of poems when he was killed a week before the end of the war, but in later decades he became seen as the essential British war poet. His works such as Anthem for Doomed Youth, Strange Meeting and Dulce et Decorum Est went on to be inseparable from the memory of the war and its futility. However, while Owen is best known for his poetry of the trenches, his letters offer a more nuanced insight into him such as his pride in being an officer in charge of others and in being a soldier who fought alongside his comrades.

With

Jane Potter
Reader in The School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University

Fran Brearton
Professor of Modern Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast

And

Guy Cuthbertson
Professor of British Literature and Culture at Liverpool Hope University

Producer: Simon Tillotson