Wilfred Owen was educated at Shrewsbury Technical School before going on to study Theology part-time at the University of Reading. His mother detested smoking, drinking and the theatre and approved of poetry, watercolours and clergymen.
During the early years of the war he lived in France teaching English and only returned to England in 1915 to join up with the Artists’ Rifles. Accounting for his shell-shock which took him to Craiglockhart in 1917, he wrote to his sister:
You know it was not the Bosche that worked me up, nor the explosives, but it was living so long by poor old Cock Robin (as we used to call 2/Lt Gaukroger), who lay not only near by, but in various places around and about, if you understand. I hope you don’t!
Wilfred Owen’s Poems:
- The Send-Off
- Spring Offensive
- Strange Meeting
- Anthem for Doomed Youth
- The Parable of the Old Man and the Young – video
- Exposure
- Dulce et Decorum Est
More about Wilfred Owen
Attitudes towards Death: ‘The Soldier’, by Rupert Brooke and ‘The Next War’ by Wilfred Owen
Soldiers Don’t Go Mad: A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry and Mental Illness During the First World War by Charles Glass, Penguin Press, 2023
Resources for Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen Bookmark by Peter Cash on the EA website