Brian Gardner (1)

A decent collection of Second World War poetry, hamstrung by the decision to fish from a small pool. Brian Gardner's selection restricts itself to British poets, despite America's much larger role in the conflict compared to the First World War, and despite the fact that the more global nature of the fighting affected many more countries than the First. (I would recommend Edward Hudson's more recent collection, even though it is shorter.) Nonetheless, there is a rewarding clarity to the poems. Even if they're not always the best, objectively speaking, Gardner is right when he notes the 'essential honesty' that exists in times of war (pg. xxiv). One cannot lie in war, at least not to oneself, so there's no falseness or affectation in any of the pieces.

For whatever reason, there seems to have been less great poetry that came out of the Second World War than the First, when heavyweights like Owen, Sassoon and McCrae wrote enduring pieces that still retain their power today. One can speculate why this is the case. Perhaps it was a people's war, more total than the First, and less focused on the educated, literary officer class that wrote so well of the previous war. Perhaps the modernizing world had found – in music, radio and, particularly, cinema – other mediums of entertainment, and artistic expression found release elsewhere instead of solely in poetry.

I think one reason – which one can trace in the progressing mood of the pieces in Gardner's collection – is that there was less of a disillusionment in 1939 and 1940 than there was between 1914-18. In that earlier war, Europe exited a golden age and – the war not over by Christmas as they had confidently promised – spent the blood of the best of its youth in mud and gas and shards of metal. A profound bitterness and energy and sea-change in outlook was bound to colour some great poetry.

In the Second, there was less of a disillusionment among the people. People knew this time what they were heading into, because the first war was, tragically, so recent to them. (When an unprecedented shock did occur – such as the blitzkrieg into France in May 1940 and finding German panzers poised to invade Britain – it allows for some of the best poetry in Gardner's collection, such as Dorothy L. Sayers' 'The English War'.) Not coincidentally, given this weariness at the prospect of another exhausting conflict, some of the best poems in the book come at the end. There is a sense of release in the 'Victory' poems, when peace is about to break out onto a new world. However, the book ends with a coda that soberly warns of the power of the newly-used atomic bomb – the 'terrible Rain' that may wash over the land. It is a prospect that, amazingly, one still needs to be wary of in 2017.… (meer)

The poetry from the First World War is amongst the most profound ever produced in English, so with any anthology you are bound to get a strong showing. Up the Line to Death is strong, with the mix of mainstays in the genre (Owen, Sassoon, McCrae, etc.) and some lesser-known pieces. The collection is not comprehensive and, surprisingly, Gardner admits in his introduction that some well-known poems were deliberately omitted to make the collection a 'publishing proposition' at the time (pg. xxv). This might have swayed the publishers in 1964 but it does damage the collection in posterity.

Maybe I've been spoiled, because my first sustained exposure to war poetry was in Hibberd and Onions' The Winter of the World, a comprehensive collection of First World War poetry which also managed to arrange things with a readable flow and provide unobstructive biographical context. But Gardner's older collection holds, and the uncomfortable truth of war poetry will likely never wane. There are probably many reasons for our continued fascination; Gardner's introduction speculates on some of them, including the immediacy of the lines from poets who didn't know if they would live long enough to write revisions, its own incomprehensibility to us in a peaceful time and our futile attempts to understand such horror, and the admiration for gentle men who, though they despised the war, could find the nobility of man in their war (pg. xx).

Personally, I think it is because, as Gardner writes, "the journey from Laurence Binyon's 'The Fourth of August' to Philip Johnstone's 'High Wood' was a long a terrible one" (pg. xxv) – there was a profound and violent shift in such a condensed period of time, from the happy patriotism of the summer of 1914 to the grey and wearied disillusionment of 1918's armistice. Such a seismic shift is always likely to fascinate us, particularly as one might pinpoint 1914-18 as the years when the Western world's back was broken, its leaping ascendency arrested. Whatever the reason, or whatever the correct hierarchy of the multiple reasons, one cannot help but read poetry of such grief and pain and disillusionment and vow never to forget, never to "misremember what once they learnt with pain" (Edward Shanks, 'The Old Soldiers', pg. 16). One reads the flawless 'Dulce et Decorum Est' and vows never to repeat the 'old Lie' that Wilfred Owen died to tell us about, just a week shy of the armistice.… (meer)

993 The Quest for Timbuctoo, by Brian Gardner (read 8 Jan 1969) It has been some years since I have read an "explorer" book. This book is well put together, telling in detail of Robert Adams, an American sailor who was taken to Timbuctoo in February, 1811; Alexander Gordon Laing, a Scotsman, who reached Timbuctoo on Aug 13, 1826, but was killed 30 miles north of Timbuctoo on his way back to civilization; Rene Caille, a Frenchman, who in 1829 reached Timbuctoo, and then managed to get to Tangiers, and tell of his trip; and Heinrich Barth, a German who traveled for England, who reached Timbuctoo on Sept 7, 1853. I would like to go to Timbuctoo!… (meer)

2364 The East India Company: A History, by Brian Gardner (read 28 Feb 1991) This is a 1971 book on the history of the East India Company, which began about 1600 and ended in 1874--really its role ended after the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. This was a very good book, even though it was without footnotes and bibliography. It really tells the story of the British in India till 1857. The story of the 1857 Mutiny is a fantastic climax to the amazing story of the East India Company. It is a fantastic saga--the British in India--and one which is well worth the attention I have given it.… (meer)