East, West, Brenchley's Best

[desperance]

Idly doing blogsearches while I wait for a competent friend to turn up with a box of tools and a pair of daughters, to try and fix my door while amusing Barry, I find that Siegfried Sassoon grew up in Brenchley (a rather lovely & very English village in Kent). I am touched by this - and reduced to giggles by the webpage, which consents to admit that he "became a very famous war-poet" in that single throwaway phrase, in the midst of a long, long post about all the men he may or may not have slept with, darling. La.

Comments

[scholars-blog.livejournal.com]

Well I know that wasn't *my* site you were looking at - 'cos I don't discuss Sassoon's private life in that much detail over on Counter-Attack (http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/) !!

They had a cricket match down there earlier this year, to celebrate his birthday - but I missed it, despite having founded (and been President of) the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship back in 2002 ! Fantasy lured me away...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Definitely not your site, which is a model of rectitude by comparison. I could find you the link, if you wanted it...

But is Weirleigh actually in Brenchley or Matfield? My family pride is at stake now...

[scholars-blog.livejournal.com]

Thanks ("model of rectitude" - no one's ever said *that* before !!)

I believe that Weirleight's in Matfield, but SS always used to play cricket for Brenchley - do you know, I actually can't *remember* ! I used to know everything about SS and being able to recite it off the top of my head ! That's what 5 years of intense fantasy reading does - shoves everything else to the back of the brain. I'll check for you...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Thanks ("model of rectitude" - no one's ever said *that* before !!)

We strive to be original. The URL for SS-as-gay-icon is http://www.circa-club.com/wordpress/?p=218

So what brought on this sudden shift, from SS to fantasy? (If you've gone into this elsewhere, just point me at the piece...)

[scholars-blog.livejournal.com]

Weirleigh's in Brenchley, by the way - I've now checked ! But it was Matfield Cricket team SS played for... I'll check the site to which you've linked...

RE. the shift from SS to fantasy. Actually it wasn't sudden. I always loved fantasy as a child, starting with Narnia and The Hobbit. I fell in love with Sassoon's poetry one day in 1992 on hearing a poem of his ("The Grandeur of Ghosts") on the radio and realising I understood, in a way I never had before, *exactly* what the poet was talking about. I made a note of poet and poem and eventually tracked down a copy (this was in my pre-internet days). I became very fascinated with SS and with the whole history of the FWW, and devoted myself to reading everything I could. In the end I went to Uni. to do a combined English and History degree.

During my first year I heard about the Harry Potter books from a primary school teacher friend and when I was looking for something to read as an antidote to my first year exams, I picked up the first two and got hooked (this was pre-HP hype). Reading the HP books reminded me that I'd always loved fantasy but since my interest in WW1 had developed I'd read hardly any except "The Lord of the Rings" (although I didn't read it whilst doing my degree owing to everything else I had to read). At every opportunity I did WW1-related essays for my coursework until my final semester - I had planned another WW1 paper, but my tutor suggested I do something different for a change and persuaded me to write on Harry Potter, even though I knew practically nothing about children's literature criticism/theory. However, I plunged into reading all sorts of children's fantasy that I'd missed as a child or had been published recently (including various of Philip Pullman's books) and re-awakened my interest in fantasy as a whole. My tutor encouraged me to publish my HP paper, which I did, but my first conference paper was on women's poetry of WW1.

I founded the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship in 2002, following the success of the Siegfried Sassoon celebration day (at Marlborough College) in 2001. However, the release of the LotR films sent me back to Tolkien, and a continuing interest in Harry Potter got me reading more fantasy - and slowly but steadily I shifted the main focus of my attention away from WW1 and towards fantasy and children's literature. I've not totally abandoned my interest in WW1 - I still can't see a war memorial without stopping to read every single name recorded there, but I don't write about WW1 any longer, hence the website's no longer updated and I stepped down as President of the SSF in 2004... And instead I have a Blog that focuses on fantasy and children's literature...