Marching to Elysium

Classical Allusions in the World War I Poetry of Winchester College

Thus Montague John Rendall, then Headmaster of the historic English boarding school Winchester College, commemorated a brilliant former student in an introduction to the young man’s published dissertation on ancient Greek education. The student, Kenneth John Freeman, was a gifted classicist who passed away prematurely in 1907 after a struggle with an unknown illness. It is chilling to read these lines when we remember that hundreds of Freeman’s schoolmates would, just a few years later, become soldiers on the battlefields of World War I. They, like Freeman, often saw war through the prism of the ancient world. And, like him, too many of them died young.

World War I hit these English boarding schools — called “public schools,” despite their elite character — especially hard. Edward C. Mack remarks that public school graduates “volunteered almost to a man for service in the trenches.” 2,488 members of the Winchester community (including both students and staff) served in the war; 514 of them died. There were only about 500 students in the school at any one time during the war. Other public schools sent similar proportions of their…

Related posts:

Something is definitely wrong when your menstrual cycle is irregular! Bleeding in periods is scanty or heavy! It could be PCOS — Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) — a gynaecological disorder in which…

Because volcanic activity speaks to our senses. It represents a basic element of nature — fire and earth — to which we instinctively have an attraction. It’s similar to how we feel when we look at…

When we feel strong emotions such as happiness, sadness, and/or frustration, we’re not sure why it may be due to our subconscious. The subconscious part of our brains is responsible for influencing…