All About the Boys

About the Book

This is a play about the last days of the WWI poet Wilfred Owen. A lot is known about the poet’s life, including all his letters that were kept and subsequently published along with all his poems. However, only very few of the poems were published in his lifetime, and it is not known how his soldiers, who he wrote the poems about, would have viewed them. Additionally, it is not known exactly how he met his end, only that he was killed on the banks of the Sambre Canal at Ors trying to secure the crossing. The play aims to fill those gaps in our knowledge through drama, as well as interpreting some of the poems in the light of what we now know about Owen, his place in literature, and the overall war.

About the Author

Robert J Fanshawe spent a full career in the British Royal Marines during which he wrote draft novels and his own poetry. Always interested in the First World War since hearing about his uncle who was killed in 1917 at the second battle of Ypres, he became fascinated by the poetry of Wilfred Owen during his military career. The centenary of the War presented the opportunity to write about it and Robert chose to write this play, as he saw a gap in the knowledge about Owen that was in the public domain. Robert has since written two other plays about the war and is engaged on a trilogy of novels about the war also. He lives with his family in London.