Siegfried Sassoon archive likely to stay in UK after 550,000 GBP award
A threat that a rich personal archive of Siegfried Sassoon's journals, poems and letters would be broken up or sold to the US appears to have been lifted, it will be announced today.
The National Heritage Memorial Fund will say it is awarding £550,000 to Cambridge University's campaign to buy the war poet's literary archive. That means the university is just £110,000 short of the £1.25m needed to secure it from the Sassoon estate.
The news, due to be announced at the House of Commons today, has been welcomed by prominent figures involved in the Sassoon campaign, including his official biographer, Max Egremont, who called the archive "extraordinary".
"The response to the appeal has been heartening in these difficult times and shows Sassoon's popularity and importance as a writer," he said...
... She said it was important for the nation that the archive remain in Britain. "[Sassoon] is such a figure and had such an impact on the historiography of world war one," she said.
Sassoon, a patriot, joined up as war was about to break out and soon ended up in the unimaginable horror of the western front. The experience traumatised and transformed him.
He was a courageous soldier but was sometimes stupidly brave and some of his actions may have been the result of his depression at what was going on around him.
In 1917, a year after being awarded the Military Cross, Sassoon published The Soldier's Declaration – a handwritten copy of which exists in the archive. This was his impassioned refusal to return to duty after being wounded...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
The National Heritage Memorial Fund will say it is awarding £550,000 to Cambridge University's campaign to buy the war poet's literary archive. That means the university is just £110,000 short of the £1.25m needed to secure it from the Sassoon estate.
The news, due to be announced at the House of Commons today, has been welcomed by prominent figures involved in the Sassoon campaign, including his official biographer, Max Egremont, who called the archive "extraordinary".
"The response to the appeal has been heartening in these difficult times and shows Sassoon's popularity and importance as a writer," he said...
... She said it was important for the nation that the archive remain in Britain. "[Sassoon] is such a figure and had such an impact on the historiography of world war one," she said.
Sassoon, a patriot, joined up as war was about to break out and soon ended up in the unimaginable horror of the western front. The experience traumatised and transformed him.
He was a courageous soldier but was sometimes stupidly brave and some of his actions may have been the result of his depression at what was going on around him.
In 1917, a year after being awarded the Military Cross, Sassoon published The Soldier's Declaration – a handwritten copy of which exists in the archive. This was his impassioned refusal to return to duty after being wounded...