View source for Julian Grenfell

30 March 1888 - 26 May 1915. Full name: Julian Henry Francis Grenfell. British soldier and war poet.


Julian Grenfell was born in London on 30 March 1888 as the eldest son of William Grenfell, a British sportsman, and Ethel Grenfell, a society hostess. Grenfell was educated at Eton College in Oxford and afterwards attended Balliol College where he studied Classics and Philosophy. There Grenfell proved to be a gifted athlete but also writer and artist. At college he wrote a collection of seven interrelated essays in which he criticized the British aristocracy and thus verbalized his distaste towards his mother´s genteel associates. Their rejection of his ideas and values in combination with heavy depression and a failed romantic relation to the married Pamela Lytton led to Grenfell joining the British Army in 1910. 

On deployments in India and South Africa Grenfell kept writing and discovered his liking for the works of the contemporary poet [[Rupert Brooke]]. Soon after the outbreak of World War I his regiment was sent to the Western Front. At war, Grenfell was awarded the Distinguished Service Order along with a promotion which he refused in order to stay at the front. As a reaction to this offer, he wrote the satirical poem “Prayer for Those on the Staff” in which he ridicules his army superiors for remaining in safety, far away from battle.

Grenfell´s attitudes towards war were contrary to those of many contemporary war poets. In letters home he praised war for the excitement of battle and the comradeship among the soldiers. On 13 May 1915 he was hit in the head by a shrapnel splinter near Ypres and died in a hospital in Boulogne on 26 May 1915. The news of his death was published together with his most famous poem “Into Battle” in ''The Times'' shortly after. Written near the front of Ypres, this poem displays Grenfell´s deep affection for nature as well as his idealistic and glorifying view on war.

== Sources == 

Stallworthy, Jon. ''Anthem for Doomed Youth: Twelve Soldier Poets of the First World War''. Paperback edition, London: Constable, 2013.

Bolger, Andrea, “Julian Grenfell (1888 – 1915).” ''The War Poets Association'', Sept. 2005, https://warpoets.org/conflicts/great-war/julian-grenfell-1888-1915/. Accessed 27 June 2021.

“Julian Grenfell.” ''Poetry Foundation'', https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/julian-grenfell. Accessed 27 June 2021