His mother hoped the move would lead to his joining the clergy. Early works like “Written in a Wood, September 1910”, reflecting on the majesty of an ancient beech tree, point to his wonder in nature and early infatuation with the Lake Poets.Ī devout young man raised among evangelical Anglicans, at 18 Owen accepted a post as a lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden in the Thames Valley. Wilfred and his three siblings roamed the countryside around Broxton as children, his brother Harold later citing the landscape as a key inspiration. Like John Keats before him - a poet the young Owen greatly admired and whose Hampstead house he made a pilgrimage to - Owen was just 25 when he met his end, the extent of his achievement all the more extraordinary given the brevity of his time on earth.īorn on 18 March 1893 in Oswestry, Shropshire, Wilfred Owen was raised in Birkenhead on the Wirral after his father Thomas was appointed stationmaster to the Woodside terminus. His mother received the news by telegram on Armistice Day as the church bells of Shrewsbury rang out in celebration of victory. The second lieutenant was killed in action as he led a raiding party across the Sambre-Oise Canal in northern France on 4 November 1918, just a week before the Armistice was signed and the First World War brought to a close.
Wilfred Owen, the great British war poet, died a century ago this weekend.
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