author
Geoffrey Dearmer
1893–1996
A First World War poet who lived to be 103, he wrote with unusual clarity about battle, loss, and the hard work of remembering. His poems were admired early, forgotten for decades, and then rediscovered late in life.
1 Audiobook
Poems
by Geoffrey Dearmer
About the author
Born in London on March 21, 1893, he was the son of Percy Dearmer, the Anglican priest and hymnologist, and Mabel Dearmer, an artist and writer. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and his life stretched across more than a century of enormous change.
During the First World War, he served with the London Regiment at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. Those experiences shaped some of his best-known poetry, including work later gathered in Poems (1918), noted for its direct, unsentimental view of war.
After the war, he worked in broadcasting and was remembered as a former editor of BBC Radio Children's Hour. Although his reputation faded for many years, his writing was revived late in life, and a selection, A Pilgrim's Song, appeared in 1993. He died on August 18, 1996, at the age of 103.