Faber & Faber

Now All Roads Lead to France: Matthew Hollis

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Synopsis:

WINNER OF THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD.

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.

 

Tags:

Categorised as:

Non-fiction

Sub-categories:

Biography & Memoir

Genres & Themes:

Friendship; War; Writers; WWI

Awards & Prizes:

H. W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize - Winner 2011; Costa Biography Award - Winner 2011

Events:

Matthew Hollis in Conversation at StAnza, Mar 17; Matthew Hollis at Words by the Water, Keswick, Mar 09