"Now All Roads Lead To France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas" by Matthew Hollis

[chesilbeach]

Synopsis (from amazon.co.uk):

Edward Thomas was perhaps the most beguiling and influential of First World War poets. Now All Roads Lead to France is an account of his final five years, centred on his extraordinary friendship with Robert Frost and Thomas's fatal decision to fight in the war. The book also evokes an astonishingly creative moment in English literature, when London was a battleground for new, ambitious kinds of writing. A generation that included W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost and Rupert Brooke were 'making it new' - vehemently and pugnaciously. These larger-than-life characters surround a central figure, tormented by his work and his marriage. But as his friendship with Frost blossomed, Thomas wrote poem after poem, and his emotional affliction began to lift. In 1914 the two friends formed the ideas that would produce some of the most remarkable verse of the twentieth century. But the War put an ocean between them: Frost returned to the safety of New England while Thomas stayed to fight for the Old. It is these roads taken - and those not taken - that are at the heart of this remarkable book, which culminates in Thomas's tragic death on Easter Monday 1917.

 

This is a departure from my usual reading, but a very welcome one. My knowledge of the First World War is very sketchy and I've never really got to grips with poetry, but for some reason I was drawn to this biography looking at the final years of the British poet Edward Thomas who died in WWI. The book covers the period from 1913 to his death in 1917, and more than just look at Thomas's life, it also looks at the literary scene in London at that time. The main story, though, is Thomas's friendship with American poet Robert Frost, and Thomas's transition from reviewer and writer of prose to arguably one of the most influential poets of his generation.

 

This was a fascinating book, and so well written, bringing to life the man and his family and friends, and often focusing on the influence that his great friendship with Frost had on his life. It's not always an easy read - his bouts of depression and the measures he takes to cope with his relationships with his family are often hard and I felt desperately sorry for Helen, his wife, at times, although she comes across as a very strong woman, who learned to cope in her own accepting way.

 

As someone who doesn't read (and on the odd occasion I do, understand) poetry, I was still fascinated during the sections covering the change taking place in the style of verse being written by the new poets of the era, such as Frost, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen and W. B. Yeats. Thomas's transition to poet was fairly sudden, and ran alongside his ongoing battle with the decision of whether to enlist after the outbreak of the war, but once he had taken the step to become a poet, his poetry seemed to flow almost immediately.

 

I'll just finish by saying that I rarely finish a biography if I start one, I'll repeat that I don't read poetry, and again that I know very little about WWI, but this book was fascinating from start to finish, and I can't recommend it highly enough.