Writing to Edward Marsh in February 1916 Robert Graves said of Sorley: 'It seems ridiculous to fall in love with a dead man as I have found myself doing but he seems to have been so entirely after my own heart in his loves and hates, besides having been just my own age…' Charles Hamilton Sorley was killed in action near Hulluch during October 1915. At the age of only twenty, he was one of the first poets of real importance to fall in the Great War and he was certainly to be the youngest. He published nothing in his brief lifetime and when the idea of publication had been suggested to him shortly after his departure to the trenches he had dismissed it, remarking: 'Besides, this is no time for olive-yards and vineyards, more especially of the small-holdings type. For three years or the duration of the war, let be.'

Sorley possessed neither the magnetic glamour of Rupert Brooke nor the blunt ferocity of Sassoon. His poetry was dry, displaying a chilling intelligence and a maturity beyond his years. His poem 'To Germany'. begins simply, 'You are blind like us', and there is a complete absence of grandiose dynamism in his measured tones. His instinctive rationalism prevented poetry from the heart. Sorley drew not from anger nor patriotism but from detached understanding. It is therefore not surprising that his quiet and reasoned words have so often been passed by. Even at his most provocative in his ...