Graves, Robert (von Ranke) (July 26, 1895, Wimbledon [now part of London] – December 7, 1985, Deyá [Majorca]), British writer and literary scholar. Graves’ prewar work is customarily assigned to the so-called Georgian school, a group of poets that cultivated a Late Romantic style. Both he and his friend the writer Siegfried Sassoon, who, like him, served as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, were profoundly influenced by the war. Graves was wounded in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme, his many …

Grey, Sir Edward (April 25, 1862, Fallodon, County of Northumberland – September 7, 1933, Fallodon; from 1916 First Viscount Grey of Fallodon), British politician. Grey was foreign secretary from 1905 to 1916, and chief architect of Britain’s foreign policy before the war. After studying at Balliol College, Oxford, he was elected to the House of Commons in 1885 as Liberal member of parliament for the constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Grey retained this seat for his entire political career. As par…

Sitwell, Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell (December 6, 1892, London – May 4, 1969, Florence), British writer. Sitwell enlisted with the First Battalion of the Grenadier Guards in December 1914. His experience of trench warfare between 1914 and 1917 awakened in him a profound awareness of the pointlessness of the slaughter, an awareness he sought to articulate in his early poems. Sitwell and his sister Edith, who was also active as a poet and writer, influenced the younger generation of writers in the 1…

Cecil (of Chelwood), Edgar Algernon Robert (September 14, 1864, London – November 24, 1958, Tunbridge Wells; from 1923 First Viscount), British politician. Cecil was one of the architects and longstanding champions of the League of Nations. After training as a lawyer, he began his political career in 1906 as Conservative Member of Parliament for East Marylebone. At the outbreak of the First World War he first became involved with the Red Cross. He became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Fore…

Milner, Alfred (March 23, 1854, Giessen, Germany – May 13, 1925, Sturry Court, Kent; Viscount from 1902), British politician. Milner was educated at King’s College (London) and Balliol College (Oxford University). After a brief spell in journalism, and an unsuccessful bid for parliament as a Liberal candidate (1885), he finally sought a career in the colonial service. He found his true calling as a convinced imperialist, organizing the economic reconstruction of South Africa after the Boer War. It…

Sassoon, Siegfried Lorraine (September 8, 1886, Weirleigh [Kent] – September 1, 1967, Heytesbury [Wiltshire]), British writer. Sassoon joined the Sussex Yeomanry in 1914, and in the following year signed up with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, an elite British regiment. At the end of June 1916, Second Lieutenant Sassoon was awarded the Military Cross for outstanding courage in the field. He was seen as an audaciously daring soldier (“Mad Jack”), who frequently volunteered for nighttime assaults. Some we…

Asquith, Herbert Henry (September 12, 1863, Morley [West Yorkshire] – February 15, 1928, London; from 1925 Earl of Oxford and Asquith), British politician and leader of the Liberal Party; prime minister 1908–1916. Asquith belonged to the liberal-imperialist wing of his party. A member of the House of Commons from 1886, from 1891 he served as home secretary under William Gladstone. After the landslide victory in the 1906 election, which ended a period of nearly ten years in opposition for the Libera…