David Jones: A Life by Keith Alldritt (Constable £18.99)
DAVID Jones stands with Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves as one of the great writers of the First World War.
He also belongs to the British tradition of painter-writers that includes William Blake and Wyndham Lewis. But until now, there has not been a full biography of the fascinating and hugely talented man whose career spans two arts.
In 1915, David Jones enlisted in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and spent the next three years fighting in the trenches of the Western Front.
They were arguably the most significant years of his life and led to the writing of his masterpiece In Parenthesis, which took some 20 years to write, and was not published until 1937.
It graphically records both the horrors of war and the sense of human fellowship that united many of the soldiers fighting in the appalling conditions of northern France and Flanders.
This book, an account of a remarkable man's life, is a fitting memorial to a great writer and human being.
John Phillpott
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