09 Jan Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen is regarded as the greatest of the First World War poets. His poems attempt to educate the innocent public about the horrors of the war and the cynicism of the politicians directing it. Although Owen strenuously opposed the war, he showed great gallantry and was awarded the Military Cross for his courage and leadership. Owen died on 4 November 1918, exactly one week before the Armistice that brought the fighting to an end. He was 25 years old.

The Wilfred Owen Story is an excellent museum dedicated to his memory in Birkenhead (near Liverpool). In Oswestry, where Owen was born, there’s a stone bench against a wall by St Oswald’s Church. Above the bench, engraved in steel, are the poems Anthem for Doomed Youth (1917) and Futility (1918). A marble memorial stone in Poets’ Corner in London’s Westminster Abbey commemorates Owen and 15 other First World War poets. The inscription around the sixteen names reads: My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.