Our narrator's natural Conservatism and patriotism evaporate on exposure to the realities of trench warfare. And the measured judgements of this cheerful innocent are much more powerful than any number of angry denunciations from other quarters.

Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL7855542M Openlibrary_edition He is also left-wing. His sympathies are with the "simple soldier", and against the "Majors at the Base" who "speed glum heroes up the line to death". He publishes poems in magazines like the Nation (which nowadays trades as the New Statesman). Poems scarlet with rage: This is an interesting novel, not the simple evocation of a lost past that I was expecting; there is much more nuance and Sassoon was clearly expressing a good deal of ambivalence (sitting on the fence if I am being cynical). The asides make it more interesting as do the evocations of Proust. That quote comes from an article by Peter Green in New Republic, which reading group contributor MythicalMagpie highlighted. The whole article is well worth reading, with the great historian on typically smart and provocative form. He also says that Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is "carefully sanitised" and that all Sassoon "wanted was the past". Green explains the success of the novel in deeply unflattering terms:

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The ban marked the formal end to an era that was, I suppose, in practice already long gone – the time of local hunts that brought small country communities together, ruddy-faced farmers doffing their caps as the squire rode past in hunting pink, everyone knowing everyone else and everyone knowing their place. Nowadays these same picturesque little villages are more likely to hold bankers on weekend retreats, adulterous retirees, and women pulling in six figures selling gold lamé tea-towels on Etsy. TE Lawrence once remarked that “if I were trying to export the ideal Englishman to an international exhibition, I think I’d like to choose Siegfried Sassoon for chief exhibit”. Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, published in 1928 and attractively reissued by Faber, is that ideal Englishman’s regretful (sometimes slightly cloyingly nostalgic) lament for an ideal, vanished England. The book ends with Sassoon heading off to the war that would inspire his famous poems.

When the war comes, George is one of the first to sign on. Like many, he expects the war to be a glorious affair—as was the case in earlier centuries—and is motivated by virtues of courage and patriotism instilled in him from an early age. While George at first signs up as a cavalryman for the Sussex Yeomanry, a subsequent injury encourages him to change his mind, and his friend Captain Huxtable helps him obtain a commission in the Royal Welsh, which would see action in the trenches.I recently saw the film, 'Benediction', about Siegfried Sassoon. I had only just read Pat Barker's 'The Ghost Road' (part of the 'Regeneration' trilogy), again featuring Sassoon and a number of his peers. Thomas Hardy’s flair for describing English pastoral and village life came through as inspiration for Sassoon (they were friends):

Anyone who cares to do so is at liberty to make fun of the trepidations which a young man carries about with him and conceals. But there is a risk in such ridicule. As I remember and write, I grin, but not unkindly, at my distant and callow self and the absurdities which constitute his chronicle. To my mind the only thing that matters is the resolve to do something...even though [these thoughts] are only about buying a racing-cap.

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Most British people of a certain age will know of Siegfried Sassoon as one of the WWI soldier poets. When I was at high school in the 1970s his anti-war poems, and those of Wilfred Owen, featured prominently in our English lessons, a fashion that seems to have passed. This book is however the first part of his best known prose work, a "fictionalised autobiography" in three parts, with Sassoon thinly disguised as one George Sherston. urn:lcp:memoirsoffoxhunt00sieg:epub:df610145-94c6-4765-8a78-8c54981abb3a Extramarc Columbia University Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier memoirsoffoxhunt00sieg Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t14n0g53b Isbn 057106454X Homosexuality also gets a look in: three male friendships feature prominently in the book and can either be treated as bromances or as veiled homosexual encounters - both are satisfactory for the reader.

I can hear the creak of the saddle and the clop and clink of the hoofs as we cross the bridge over the brook by Dundell Farm; there is a light burning in the farmhouse window, and the evening star glitters above a broken drift of half-luminous cloud.” I had a difficult time relating with

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Possibly more surprising is the fact that Sassoon should write with such loveliness. It takes some getting used to, after those poems. Sassoon, who dwelt so long on grey mud, bleached sand bags and ashen-faced soldiers, on the stench of death, on screams and on the sound of wind "dulled by guns", can also describe sensory perceptions with all the sensual relish of Proust (of whom he was clearly a fan):