Laurence Binyon

author

Laurence Binyon

1869–1943

Best remembered for the moving First World War poem “For the Fallen,” this English writer also spent decades bringing Asian art to wider British audiences. His life joined poetry, scholarship, and public service in a way that still feels distinctive.

4 Audiobooks

Primavera: Poems by Four Authors

Primavera: Poems by Four Authors

by Laurence Binyon, Arthur Shearly Cripps, Manmohan Ghose, Stephen Phillips

Arthur : $b A tragedy

Arthur : $b A tragedy

by Laurence Binyon

Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century

Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century

by Laurence Binyon

The sirens : $b An ode

The sirens : $b An ode

by Laurence Binyon

About the author

Born in Lancaster in 1869, Laurence Binyon became known as an English poet, dramatist, and scholar of art. He studied at St Paul’s School in London and then at Trinity College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry while still a student.

Much of his working life was spent at the British Museum, where he built a major reputation as a curator and expert on Asian art, especially Chinese and Japanese painting. Alongside that scholarly career, he published poetry and plays, but he is most widely remembered for For the Fallen, the poem that includes the line beginning “They shall grow not old,” written during the First World War.

In later years he continued to write, lecture, and translate, including work on Dante. He died in 1943, leaving behind a body of work that connects literary culture with a deep, serious love of art and remembrance.