"When Wilfred Owen died in 1918 aged 25, only five of his poems had been published. Yet he became one of the most popular poets of the twentieth century and is now the national poet of war, often quoted in newspapers, documentaries, novels. Today his work speaks to many young people more powerfully than any other poetry. " "This book, based on over thirty years of wide-ranging research, brings new information and reinterpretation to virtually every point in Owen's life. Fresh light is shed on his family background, education and struggles with religion. His sexual orientation - for he was indeed gay - is fully discussed for the first time. His army training and experiences on the Western Front are described in vivid detail, using original military archives. Throughout it all the poet steadily develops, from his early devotion to Wordsworth and the Romantics in 1910-11, through his discovery of the French Decadents in 1914-15 and his friendship with Siegfried Sassoon in 1917, to the final, superb achievement of the mature 1918 poems. "--BOOK JACKET.