How a hospital meeting inspired Wilfred Owen’s World War I poetry

Owen is often regarded as the best wartime poet of his generation but his potential may never have been realised had he not met Sassoon at Craiglockhart, a hospital in Edinburgh for shell-shocked soldiers.

While recovering from Covid-19, American journalist and author Charles Glass used his isolation to delve into their poetry and reflect on their lives.

The hospital featured in the Regeneration novels by Pat Barker, which were published in the 1990s and later adapted for the cinema.

Glass was captivated by their story and set out to write the non-fiction version of Barker’s acclaimed trilogy.

While researching, he found Owen’s pairing with his psychiatrist encouraged him to write poetry and proved crucial to his recovery.

The book, Soldiers Don’t Go Mad, is being launched at the site of the hospital, now a part of Edinburgh Napier University, later this month.

Glass explained: “That phrase comes from a poem by Siegfried Sassoon in which he wrote ‘soldiers don’t go mad unless they lose control of ugly thoughts’.

“There was a belief, widespread in the military and in civil society that soldiers were somehow above the weakness of mental illness that they would never become hysterical.

“But in fact, given what they went through, mental breakdown was a normal reaction to an abnormal situation.”