As a writer with a profound gift for observation, Thomas had always been a punctilious note-taker, and his war-diary was clearly intended as an aide-mémoire for future works which he never had chance to write. Isolated sentences in the diary often have the cadence of first lines of poems, and many of the descriptions, with their casual observations of wild animals, human behaviour, and sudden moments of destruction, are compelling even in note-form. The poems in this book are intended as a tribute to one of the most accomplished prose-stylists of the early twentieth century – and one of its subtlest and most original poets. Some may be read in the voice of Thomas himself; others range more widely – but all make partial use of Thomas’s own words.

Philip Edward Thomas (3 March 1878 – 9 April 1917) was an Anglo-Welsh poet, essayist, and novelist. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences, and his career in poetry only came after he had already been a successful writer and literary critic. In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army to fight in the First World War and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.