Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon was an English poet, memoirist and army officer whose First World War service transformed his writing and public reputation. Born in Kent in 1886, he entered the army in 1914 and later served as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He fought with conspicuous courage on the Western Front and received the Military Cross, but the deaths of friends and his experience of industrialised warfare increasingly shaped the bitter, satirical poems for which he became famous.

In 1917 Sassoon issued A Soldier’s Declaration, arguing that the war was being deliberately prolonged. Rather than court-martial a decorated officer, the authorities sent him to Craiglockhart War Hospital, where he met Wilfred Owen and encouraged the younger poet’s work. Sassoon later returned to active service, was wounded, and survived the war. His post-war writings included the semi-autobiographical Sherston trilogy and prose memoirs that helped define later British memory of trench warfare.

Pat Barker makes Sassoon a central historical character in Regeneration and continues his presence through The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road, using his protest and treatment at Craiglockhart as part of the trilogy’s examination of war trauma and authority. Iain Gale’s Zero Hour places him within the military world of 1918, while Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That supplies the linked memoir of a fellow Royal Welch Fusiliers officer and friend.