The poetry that emerged from the trenches of WWI is a remarkable body of work, at once political manifesto and literary beacon for the twentieth century. In this passionate recreation of the lives of the greatest poets to come out of the conflict, Nicholas Murray brilliantly reveals the men themselves as well as the struggle of the artist to live fully and to bear witness in the annihilating squalor of battle.Bringing into sharp focus the human detail of each life, using journals, letters and literary archives, Murray brings to life the men's indissoluble comradeship, their complex sexual mores and their extraordinary courage. Poignant, vivid and unfailingly intelligent, Nicholas Murray's study offers new and finely tuned insight into the - often devastatingly brief - lives of a remarkable generation of men.

'It is the argument of this book that the British poets of the First World War were not anti-war but "anti-heroic".' "I should perhaps have underlined that I meant "anti-heroic" to apply to style and attitude rather than implying that the poets were not capable of acts of heroism which they were and demonstrated it. It was the heroic rhetoric that they didn't like."