Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Foreign fields that are forever England
PETER FROST, in poetic mood, takes us back to the year the first world war started and how it bound the short lives of two great poets

The long hot summer of 1914 has been described as a picnic perfect. It’s a poet’s description.

In the iconic windmill in the pretty little North Norfolk holiday village of Cley next the Sea, poet Rupert Brooke was staying with another poet, Frances Cornford and her classics professor husband, confusingly also Francis. 

From the windmill the three of them would walk for miles along the dunes. They bought fish from local boats and picked wild marsh samphire. They argued about poetry and about their hopes for the future. They enjoyed frequent picnics.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
A memorial to the International Brigades that took part in the Battle of Caspe on the Aragon front in March 1938. Caspe is a town in the province of Zaragoza. The memorial was designed by Maribel Loren Ros and unveiled in 2018 / Pic: Fran Ara/CC
Poetry / 17 July 2026
17 July 2026

On the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish civil war, ALAN MORRISON selects some poems from a new anthology

Sam Wild addresses the British Battalion
Spanish Civil War 90th Anniversary / 4 July 2026
4 July 2026

Thousands of remarkable Britons left ordinary lives behind to join the struggle against Franco. Here is a snapshot of those who answered the call

Harry Pollitt (right) with International Brigade volunteer David Guest, who was killed at the Ebro in July 1938 [Pic: Marx Memorial Library]
Spanish Civil War 90th Anniversary / 4 July 2026
4 July 2026

ALEX GORDON applauds the leading role played by Harry Pollitt and the Communist Party in the fight against fascism in Spain and salutes the memory of the International Brigades

Tom Mooney Company from the Lincoln Battalion, during the Spanish Civil War, Jarama, Spain, 1937
History / 24 February 2026
24 February 2026

CJ ATKINS commemorates one of the most dramatic moments in working-class history