tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post5485162284167128978..comments2024-02-05T09:17:53.322-08:00Comments on Adrian Barlow's blog: Edward Thomas at BuchyAdrian Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04526714501872493961noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-49035038465592006952016-10-10T08:50:23.253-07:002016-10-10T08:50:23.253-07:00Dear Garry, I don’t know whether you have read the...Dear Garry, I don’t know whether you have read the yet more recent biography of Edward Thomas by Jean Moorcroft Wilson? She is another biographer to be taken seriously - her books on Sassoon and Rosenberg are essential reading - but to my dismay (and perhaps yours?) she have proved that it isn’t true Thomas was killed by the blast of a shell that left him unmarked, as all previous writers on Thomas (myself included) have believed and stated. Evidently he was shot through the chest. The origin of this myth about Thomas can be traced back to his widow Helen’s nevertheless fine memoirs ‘As it Was’ and ‘World Without End’....Adrian Barlowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04526714501872493961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-44731584440062609932012-01-26T14:41:33.399-08:002012-01-26T14:41:33.399-08:00I was in W.H. Smith's in Churchill Square Brig...I was in W.H. Smith's in Churchill Square Brighton this week looking up Matthew Hollis's biography of Edward Thomas. I must say that I was nearly tempted away by a discounted Claire Tomalin hardback on the life of Dickens but am glad I plucked up the courage to ask an assistant to find me what I was really looking for (assistants in Smiths are always seemingly busy). The first few pages were enough to tell me that I was reading a really good book and discovering an unusual life, or rather lives, as the presence of Robert Frost attests. A thoroughly-researched book, but lively rather than tediously academic. In fact with a touch of the detective novel about it. Equally on a par with Claire Tomalin, I'm sure, whose life of Mrs Jordan is a milestone in biographical writing, with its focus on an obscure eighteenth-century actress whose obscurity deserved to be 'clarified', as it were. This is not a book about a man in distress, it is on a par with Somerset Maughan's 'The Moon and Sixpence' on the life of Gauguin: a poet, an artist, 'in the toils' and whose suffering was brought, for us at least, greedy consumers of consumate art, too soon to an end, with a merciful blow that stopped his heart but maintained his beauty intact.Garry Headlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07741556616880181278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-16139898004151437282011-09-26T12:36:19.963-07:002011-09-26T12:36:19.963-07:00I very much enjoyed reading this, having just read...I very much enjoyed reading this, having just read Hollis's biography. I felt such a sense of loss for the poems not written. It was clear that he wanted to come back and the prose records in the diaries and letters would have been the source of some great poetry. I am sure there would have been one about Buchy and Madame Bigot!Monicahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15001012368734550582noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-80352086834749342592011-09-25T12:53:14.194-07:002011-09-25T12:53:14.194-07:00One of your best articles yet. Keep up the good wo...One of your best articles yet. Keep up the good work!Garry Headlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07741556616880181278noreply@blogger.com