Charles hamilton sorley biography of michael jackson

One of the earliest and most significant losses amongst the ranks of the Great War soldier-poets, Charles Hamilton Sorley is nowadays known for only a small number of his published poems.

This is unsurprising, given his short life and brief period of active service, with just over four months in France. But what poems those few are: polished, powerful and moving.

Charles hamilton sorley biography of michael jackson

Although conventional in their focus, technique and structure, they are also often striking in their quality of thinking, feeling, tone and literary skill.

The best-known, and arguably the finest, of these (two kinds of list that do not necessarily always align well) include: ‘To Germany’, ‘Barbury Camp’, ‘All the Hills and Vales Along’, and ‘Such, Such is Death’.

For many, though, the pinnacle of achievement in Sorley’s war poems is the sonnet ‘When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead’ – as distinctive and memorable a piece of soldierly reflection and regretful anger as anything from Owen or Sassoon.

Sorley was th