Sassoon, Siegfried (1886 - 1967)

English poet and writer, known for a deep attachment to the coutryside, his anti-war poetry and fictionalized autobiographies.

After a youth spent playing cricket in summer and hunting with the Eridge and Southdown packs in winter, he enlisted in World War I and was seriously wounded in France. He published his anti-war poetry, The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter-Attack (1918), while he was still in the army. He was sent to a military sanatorium where he met Wilfred Owen, whose works he published after Owen was killed at the front.

His semi-autobiographical trilogy includes Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928), Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Sherston's Progress