0:00:09 > 0:00:13In July 1916, the British Army's Welsh Division
0:00:13 > 0:00:15went into battle on the Western front.
0:00:22 > 0:00:25At Mametz Wood over 1,000 men lost their lives.
0:00:30 > 0:00:32For Wales the battle soon came to stand
0:00:32 > 0:00:34for the bloodshed of the entire war.
0:00:38 > 0:00:40And it was significant in another way.
0:00:42 > 0:00:44Fighting here was a young private
0:00:44 > 0:00:46who would go on to write a literary masterpiece
0:00:46 > 0:00:49based upon his experiences of this battle,
0:00:49 > 0:00:52a book thought by many to be the greatest piece of writing
0:00:52 > 0:00:54to emerge from the First World War.
0:00:58 > 0:01:02In Parenthesis is one of the greatest poems of the 20th century,
0:01:02 > 0:01:06poetry operating at its upper limits.
0:01:06 > 0:01:08David Jones just breaks me up.
0:01:08 > 0:01:11He just makes me want to copy out the whole poem
0:01:11 > 0:01:14because all of it is so good.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18In Parenthesis is probably the greatest book on war in English.
0:01:20 > 0:01:22Why wouldn't you want to read it?
0:01:23 > 0:01:27This film is an exploration of one of the greatest books
0:01:27 > 0:01:29ever written about war
0:01:29 > 0:01:32and the story of the man who wrote it.
0:01:55 > 0:01:58It's a long way from the mud and horror of the Somme
0:01:58 > 0:02:00to an English seaside resort,
0:02:00 > 0:02:03but it was here in Brighton in the summer of 1928
0:02:03 > 0:02:06that a 32-year-old man sat down
0:02:06 > 0:02:08to write about his wartime experiences.
0:02:13 > 0:02:15So far, so conventional, perhaps.
0:02:15 > 0:02:18The Great War had already spawned a wealth of writing and authors
0:02:18 > 0:02:21such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves
0:02:21 > 0:02:24were among the most famous of their day,
0:02:24 > 0:02:27but the book that began here was entirely different
0:02:27 > 0:02:30from anything that had gone before.
0:02:30 > 0:02:32Slowly, over the course of three years,
0:02:32 > 0:02:34it grew into what WH Auden would call
0:02:34 > 0:02:38the greatest book about the First World War.
0:02:38 > 0:02:41In Parenthesis by David Jones was hailed as a masterpiece by TS Eliot
0:02:41 > 0:02:44and even today many poets still count it
0:02:44 > 0:02:46as one of their favourite works.
0:02:47 > 0:02:51I think what In Parenthesis does
0:02:51 > 0:02:53is it puts us through it.
0:02:53 > 0:02:56Because it's long, because it's deep,
0:02:56 > 0:02:57because it's wide,
0:02:57 > 0:03:00it really does reflect something of that experience
0:03:00 > 0:03:03of the slowness of war,
0:03:03 > 0:03:05the inevitability of war
0:03:05 > 0:03:07and the incredible impact of war.
0:03:17 > 0:03:20So what is it about In Parenthesis that is so thrilling?
0:03:20 > 0:03:21And, if it is so brilliant,
0:03:21 > 0:03:25then why have so few people ever read it or even heard of it?
0:03:25 > 0:03:28Well, for a start, on first opening the book,
0:03:28 > 0:03:31it isn't entirely clear what you are reading.
0:03:31 > 0:03:35Is this an epic 200-page poem, a lyrical novel
0:03:35 > 0:03:38or a work of stream-of-consciousness reportage?
0:03:38 > 0:03:41The answer, I'd say, is all of the above and more,
0:03:41 > 0:03:44which is why I'm sure so many first readers are put
0:03:44 > 0:03:46so far out of their comfort zone.
0:03:46 > 0:03:49It's an entirely unique piece of writing,
0:03:49 > 0:03:51densely layered and deeply elusive.
0:03:52 > 0:03:55At its heart, though, the seven parts of In Parenthesis
0:03:55 > 0:03:59tell a surprisingly simple, often funny and haunting story
0:03:59 > 0:04:04of one young man's journey into war in 1915 and 1916.
0:04:04 > 0:04:07It's that story I'll be following in this film,
0:04:07 > 0:04:10the same story, in many ways, as that of David Jones himself.
0:04:28 > 0:04:31All stories have to begin somewhere,
0:04:31 > 0:04:32and for the author of In Parenthesis
0:04:32 > 0:04:35that somewhere was Brockley in south-east London.
0:04:42 > 0:04:44Walter David Jones was born in 1895
0:04:44 > 0:04:47into a lower middle class family of five.
0:04:48 > 0:04:52His mother, Alice, was the daughter of a Rotherhithe mask maker.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56His father, John, was from North Wales,
0:04:56 > 0:04:59a printer by trade and a lay preacher.
0:05:01 > 0:05:06It began with listening to his father singing in Welsh.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09David Jones wasn't really a Welshman but he loved Wales.
0:05:11 > 0:05:15His favourite childhood heroes were Owain Glyndwr
0:05:15 > 0:05:17and Admiral Nelson,
0:05:17 > 0:05:20so it's split Welsh-English 50-50.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25His earliest experience of war was when he was five years old.
0:05:25 > 0:05:30He was taking a nap in the cot beside his mother's bed
0:05:30 > 0:05:33and he heard the sound of bugles and the clatter of hooves
0:05:33 > 0:05:39and he lifted up the Venetian blind and saw cavalrymen riding.
0:05:43 > 0:05:48His mother tucked him back into his cot and he said, "Who are they?"
0:05:48 > 0:05:51And she said,
0:05:51 > 0:05:53"Never mind, you'll know soon enough."
0:06:03 > 0:06:08Welshness and soldiering are two of the cornerstones of In Parenthesis,
0:06:08 > 0:06:10but it was another interest that determined
0:06:10 > 0:06:13the course of David Jones's early life.
0:06:14 > 0:06:18At the age of 14, he enrolled at Camberwell Art School.
0:06:21 > 0:06:24David Jones began drawing at a very early age,
0:06:24 > 0:06:25six or seven.
0:06:27 > 0:06:28Some amazing drawings of animals.
0:06:28 > 0:06:30A bear performing in the streets.
0:06:32 > 0:06:34A lion which he saw at London Zoo.
0:06:36 > 0:06:38A wolf in the snow,
0:06:38 > 0:06:41which has a very strong atmosphere.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44It has a sort of symbolic force
0:06:44 > 0:06:47which is amazing in a drawing of a seven or eight year old.
0:06:52 > 0:06:55David Jones would never leave art behind.
0:06:55 > 0:06:58In fact, he went on to become as accomplished a painter
0:06:58 > 0:06:59as he was an author,
0:06:59 > 0:07:01one of the most celebrated young British artists
0:07:01 > 0:07:03of the 1920s and '30s.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07For one person to embody such a vibrant dialogue
0:07:07 > 0:07:09between visual art and literature hadn't been seen
0:07:09 > 0:07:12in British culture since the likes of William Blake.
0:07:12 > 0:07:14The ideas that Jones developed as an artist
0:07:14 > 0:07:17would go on to become a vital influence on his writing
0:07:17 > 0:07:19of In Parenthesis.
0:07:29 > 0:07:33Back in 1914, however, David Jones's direction in life
0:07:33 > 0:07:35was much less clear.
0:07:35 > 0:07:37He was coming to the end of his time at art school
0:07:37 > 0:07:40and had no idea of how he would earn a living.
0:07:40 > 0:07:44So, the outbreak of war with Germany presented a golden opportunity.
0:07:47 > 0:07:51David Jones's route to battle began almost comically.
0:07:51 > 0:07:53He tried to join the cavalry, but had to admit
0:07:53 > 0:07:55that he'd never ridden a horse.
0:07:58 > 0:08:02Eventually, in January 1915, he made it into the newly formed
0:08:02 > 0:08:0515th Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers -
0:08:05 > 0:08:07the London Welsh.
0:08:10 > 0:08:13Training lasted most of the year until finally,
0:08:13 > 0:08:17in the winter of 1915, it was time to depart for France.
0:08:22 > 0:08:25As David Jones and his comrades assembled on a parade ground,
0:08:25 > 0:08:28they could have no idea of the horror they would face
0:08:28 > 0:08:29just a few months later.
0:08:31 > 0:08:35One of the bloodiest battles of the entire Somme offensive.
0:08:38 > 0:08:41It's this moment of departure that David Jones chooses
0:08:41 > 0:08:43to open In Parenthesis.
0:08:46 > 0:08:48It's a book that, at every turn, echoes its
0:08:48 > 0:08:50author's own experiences of war.
0:09:09 > 0:09:12In Parenthesis begins at an unnamed British Army camp.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16Here, we're introduced to a host of characters of all ranks.
0:09:16 > 0:09:19Many of them based on David Jones's fellow soldiers.
0:09:22 > 0:09:27There's Major Lillywhite, described here very simply as "that shit".
0:09:27 > 0:09:33Mr Jenkins, the lieutenant, and the Welsh lance corporal Aneirin Lewis.
0:09:35 > 0:09:38Most importantly, we make the acquaintance of David Jones's
0:09:38 > 0:09:42own alter ego - a hapless, private soldier named John Ball.
0:09:43 > 0:09:46When we first meet him, he's rushing to parade.
0:09:46 > 0:09:49But his lateness has already attracted the
0:09:49 > 0:09:51commanding officer's wrath.
0:09:55 > 0:09:5601, Ball.
0:09:58 > 0:09:5901, Ball?
0:10:00 > 0:10:03Ball of number one?
0:10:03 > 0:10:04Where's Ball?
0:10:04 > 0:10:0725201, Ball!
0:10:07 > 0:10:09You, Corporal, Ball of your section!
0:10:10 > 0:10:13Heavily jolting and sideway jostling, the noise
0:10:13 > 0:10:17of liquid shaken in a small vessel by a regular jogging movement.
0:10:17 > 0:10:20All clear and distinct in that silence,
0:10:20 > 0:10:22peculiar to parade grounds and refectories.
0:10:24 > 0:10:29The silence of a high order, full of peril in the breaking of it,
0:10:29 > 0:10:32like the coming on parade of John Ball.
0:10:34 > 0:10:37He settles between numbers four and five of the rear rank.
0:10:40 > 0:10:45It is as ineffectual as the ostrich in her sand.
0:10:48 > 0:10:51That arrival late on the parade ground, in a shambles,
0:10:51 > 0:10:57in a fluster, immediately David Jones makes you care about
0:10:57 > 0:11:01this private, this hapless soldier, this clumsy man.
0:11:01 > 0:11:05And, of course, that sympathy is made greater by
0:11:05 > 0:11:08the knowledge of what came after.
0:11:08 > 0:11:09Clearly, they knew they were going into
0:11:09 > 0:11:13something terrible but we, as the readers, know that
0:11:13 > 0:11:16it was even more terrible than they could ever have imagined.
0:11:24 > 0:11:27The soldiers of In Parenthesis leave their camp
0:11:27 > 0:11:31and embark on a long, wet march to an unnamed port.
0:11:31 > 0:11:34Here, John Ball and his comrades board a ship
0:11:34 > 0:11:38bound for France, war and the unknown.
0:11:44 > 0:11:47At the end of Part One, as Ball's company arrive in the
0:11:47 > 0:11:50French countryside, something very interesting happens
0:11:50 > 0:11:52with the point of view of In Parenthesis.
0:11:52 > 0:11:55So far, their journey has been described in the third person,
0:11:55 > 0:11:59a building accumulation of 'he' and 'they.'
0:11:59 > 0:12:03But now, as the soldiers "stretched and shivered at a siding,"
0:12:03 > 0:12:07a switch is made to the inclusive immediacy of the second person.
0:12:07 > 0:12:12Like a light suddenly swivelling onto both the author and the reader,
0:12:12 > 0:12:16YOU feel exposed and apprehensive in THIS new world.
0:12:20 > 0:12:26In December 1915 Private David Jones, the writer himself,
0:12:26 > 0:12:30arrived on a continent already convulsed by war.
0:12:51 > 0:12:52As it turned out
0:12:52 > 0:12:56David Jones and his fellow soldiers weren't to see immediate action.
0:12:56 > 0:12:59Instead, they were billeted in farm buildings
0:12:59 > 0:13:01several miles from the front line.
0:13:04 > 0:13:06When the 38th division arrived in France,
0:13:06 > 0:13:08they were still undertrained.
0:13:08 > 0:13:10There's no doubt about that.
0:13:10 > 0:13:13Very few of them had handled a rifle that actually worked.
0:13:13 > 0:13:17Very few of them had fired more than eight rounds of live ammunition.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20Very few had thrown a Mills bomb hand grenade
0:13:20 > 0:13:21in any sort of meaningful way.
0:13:21 > 0:13:24So the need for extra training once they arrived in France
0:13:24 > 0:13:26was very, very important.
0:13:26 > 0:13:30It would have been learning on the job to a certain extent.
0:13:31 > 0:13:35This is where In Parenthesis picks up the story.
0:13:35 > 0:13:38"In a place of scattered farms and the tranquillity of fields.
0:13:38 > 0:13:42"In a rest area many miles this side of the trench system,
0:13:42 > 0:13:45"a place unmolested and untouched so far,
0:13:45 > 0:13:47"by the actual shock of men fighting."
0:13:55 > 0:13:57In the second part of In Parenthesis,
0:13:57 > 0:14:00the tone and form of the writing are initially relaxed.
0:14:00 > 0:14:03The soldiers are given lectures in barns,
0:14:03 > 0:14:06shown the very latest military equipment.
0:14:07 > 0:14:09The war is still an adventure here,
0:14:09 > 0:14:13and there's a pleasure in being part of a company of men.
0:14:17 > 0:14:19For all the camaraderie,
0:14:19 > 0:14:21there's a growing unease at this point in the story.
0:14:21 > 0:14:25A sense of innocence about to be betrayed.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28A distant buzz in the clear blue skies, in fact artillery.
0:14:28 > 0:14:32The sickly smell of pineapple, chlorine gas.
0:14:32 > 0:14:36These intimations of violence culminate in a shocking
0:14:36 > 0:14:39and extraordinary passage that closes Part Two.
0:14:39 > 0:14:41It's based on something that actually happened
0:14:41 > 0:14:43to David Jones here a century ago.
0:14:43 > 0:14:47The writing, though, in which the language flexes to its limit
0:14:47 > 0:14:49with the effort of total description
0:14:49 > 0:14:52makes it feel terrifyingly immediate.
0:14:56 > 0:14:59There's half a page, isn't it, of description.
0:14:59 > 0:15:01It's like close reading.
0:15:01 > 0:15:02I mean, it requires close reading.
0:15:02 > 0:15:04But it's also like an act of close reading.
0:15:04 > 0:15:06You are that close to the shell,
0:15:06 > 0:15:09just as Jones was that close to the shell.
0:15:11 > 0:15:12Yes, it's an individual moment.
0:15:12 > 0:15:16It's a specific moment, and it's focus on that.
0:15:16 > 0:15:22But, also, it sort of stands for the unimaginable business
0:15:22 > 0:15:23of being under a barrage.
0:15:27 > 0:15:30Jon Ball, the private,
0:15:30 > 0:15:33is standing alone in a farmyard at dusk, smoking,
0:15:33 > 0:15:35when he senses, as David Jones writes,
0:15:35 > 0:15:39not by any single faculty, some approaching violence.
0:15:43 > 0:15:46He stood alone on the stones,
0:15:46 > 0:15:49his mess-tin spilled at his feet.
0:15:51 > 0:15:55Out of the vortex, rifling the air, it came -
0:15:55 > 0:15:57bright, brass-shod,
0:15:57 > 0:16:00Pandoran;
0:16:00 > 0:16:04with all-filling screaming the howling crescendo's up-piling snapt.
0:16:07 > 0:16:09The universal world,
0:16:09 > 0:16:11breath held,
0:16:11 > 0:16:14one half second, a bludgeoned stillness.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20Then the pent violence released a consummation of all-burstings out...
0:16:28 > 0:16:32..all sudden up-rendings and rivings-through -
0:16:32 > 0:16:34all taking-out of vents -
0:16:34 > 0:16:37all barrier-breaking - all unmaking.
0:16:39 > 0:16:41Pernitric begetting -
0:16:41 > 0:16:45the dissolving and splitting of solid things.
0:16:48 > 0:16:52John Ball picked up his mess-tin and hurried within;
0:16:52 > 0:16:55ashen, huddled,
0:16:55 > 0:16:57waited in the dismal straw.
0:17:05 > 0:17:08Shock at the force of man-made violence had a profound effect
0:17:08 > 0:17:10on David Jones.
0:17:12 > 0:17:15It would be years before he could begin to transform
0:17:15 > 0:17:18the trauma of his wartime experience into writing.
0:17:22 > 0:17:26What he did during those years gave him the skills and ideas
0:17:26 > 0:17:28that he needed to write In Parenthesis.
0:17:29 > 0:17:34And this post-war process began with David Jones discovering himself -
0:17:34 > 0:17:36as a maker.
0:17:51 > 0:17:56When he left the Army in 1919, David Jones returned to art school.
0:17:56 > 0:18:00But it was in 1921 that his life would take a decisive turn.
0:18:00 > 0:18:03On a cold January day he travelled to Ditchling,
0:18:03 > 0:18:06a small village in the South Downs of Sussex, where he met a man
0:18:06 > 0:18:10who was to become a crucial artistic and spiritual mentor.
0:18:14 > 0:18:18Eric Gill was a charismatic and idiosyncratic sculptor and thinker.
0:18:22 > 0:18:24In the still remote village
0:18:24 > 0:18:27he was gathering around himself a group of like-minded craftsmen.
0:18:27 > 0:18:31The community of people who would make things with their hands.
0:18:39 > 0:18:41When David Jones came to Ditchling,
0:18:41 > 0:18:44Eric Gill felt he really had to knock out of him
0:18:44 > 0:18:46what he thought of as art nonsense.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49The stuff that he'd learned from the art school.
0:18:49 > 0:18:53So he apprenticed David Jones to the woodworking shop
0:18:53 > 0:18:57and he began really as a carpenter.
0:18:57 > 0:19:00And wood engraving was something that became more and more important.
0:19:00 > 0:19:03He would literally go deeper, and deeper, and deeper,
0:19:03 > 0:19:07and suddenly it would be a bear, or...become a Madonna.
0:19:07 > 0:19:12And he'd keep these things in his pockets and whittle away in the pub.
0:19:12 > 0:19:15He was gradually exploring his own way into things.
0:19:18 > 0:19:21This is the cottage that David Jones lived in,
0:19:21 > 0:19:24along with other former soldiers, turned artists.
0:19:24 > 0:19:26All of them building new lives
0:19:26 > 0:19:29in the wake of their wartime experiences.
0:19:29 > 0:19:32At the time, it was no more than a freezing outhouse and this,
0:19:32 > 0:19:35along with the somewhat helpless nature of its tenants,
0:19:35 > 0:19:38earned it the nickname The Sorrowful Mysteries.
0:19:42 > 0:19:45David Jones brought a touch of beauty to the spartan living
0:19:45 > 0:19:48conditions with a mural.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51Painted in the simple, direct Ditchling style.
0:19:53 > 0:19:55It's a remarkable survival
0:19:55 > 0:19:58and testimony to the three years David Jones spent here.
0:20:10 > 0:20:13Maybe the most important thing that did remain with David Jones
0:20:13 > 0:20:16from his time at Ditchling was a feel and a respect
0:20:16 > 0:20:19for the lovingly crafted object.
0:20:19 > 0:20:23The best kind of meeting between the man-made and natural worlds.
0:20:23 > 0:20:25He'd always loved the Welsh bairds describing
0:20:25 > 0:20:27themselves as carpenters of song.
0:20:27 > 0:20:30So perhaps it's little surprise that he would later talk about
0:20:30 > 0:20:36the writing of In Parenthesis as an attempt to make a shape in words.
0:20:57 > 0:21:00On 19 December 1915,
0:21:00 > 0:21:02the 15th battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers
0:21:02 > 0:21:05left their farm village in northern France.
0:21:07 > 0:21:10Ahead of the 20-year-old David Jones lay a long march
0:21:10 > 0:21:13into a world of increasing strangeness and violence.
0:21:14 > 0:21:17They were walking towards the front line
0:21:17 > 0:21:18and into the very earth itself.
0:21:18 > 0:21:22Into the beginnings of the labyrinthine trench system.
0:21:23 > 0:21:27At this point in the book, too, the familiar world begins to unravel.
0:21:27 > 0:21:29Trees are split and shattered.
0:21:29 > 0:21:31Iron and steel takes the place of wood.
0:21:31 > 0:21:33The ground is no longer solid.
0:21:38 > 0:21:41Mr Jenkins watched them file through,
0:21:41 > 0:21:44himself following like western-hill shepherd.
0:21:44 > 0:21:47And they themselves playing the actor to their jackets
0:21:47 > 0:21:51on sheep walks, natural restricting between the locked colonade.
0:21:52 > 0:21:55Shuts down again the close dark;
0:21:55 > 0:21:57the stumbling dark of the blind,
0:21:57 > 0:21:59that Breughel knew about -
0:21:59 > 0:22:02ditch circumscribed;
0:22:02 > 0:22:06this all depriving darkness split now by crazy flashing;
0:22:06 > 0:22:10marking hugely clear spilled bowels of trees,
0:22:10 > 0:22:12splinter-spike,
0:22:12 > 0:22:14leper-ashen,
0:22:14 > 0:22:17sprawling the receding, unknowable, wall of night...
0:22:19 > 0:22:22..the slithery causeway -
0:22:22 > 0:22:25his little flock,
0:22:25 > 0:22:27his armed bishopric
0:22:27 > 0:22:29going with weary limbs.
0:22:32 > 0:22:34This is what poets do.
0:22:34 > 0:22:35They make...
0:22:35 > 0:22:40language...new, in order to convey something that
0:22:40 > 0:22:42otherwise would be lost.
0:22:42 > 0:22:44In Part Three they enter the trenches.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48They're going to an unfamiliar place where all experience is new.
0:22:48 > 0:22:50The other thing is it's dark.
0:22:50 > 0:22:52There's nothing visual.
0:22:52 > 0:22:54You have to make the experience happen for the reader,
0:22:54 > 0:22:57and that's what he does in language and it's magical.
0:22:57 > 0:23:00But it's demanding for the reader, too.
0:23:00 > 0:23:02Certainly by the end of Part Three,
0:23:02 > 0:23:05we're in a place in literature where we've never been before.
0:23:12 > 0:23:16The bewildered soldiers finally reach the front line trench,
0:23:16 > 0:23:18where John Ball, ever the unfortunate,
0:23:18 > 0:23:20is put on night sentry duty.
0:23:22 > 0:23:25As his comrades collapse into sleep,
0:23:25 > 0:23:28they are transformed in the writing into Arthurian knights,
0:23:28 > 0:23:30sleeping under the ground.
0:23:30 > 0:23:33Soldiers of legend and deep history.
0:23:34 > 0:23:36It's a recurring motif of In Parenthesis.
0:23:42 > 0:23:48David Jones wants to stress the continuity between past and present.
0:23:48 > 0:23:51That's what Jones' allusions throughout In Parenthesis do,
0:23:51 > 0:23:53from Shakespeare, to Malory, to Homer,
0:23:53 > 0:23:56to Welsh history and legend.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59You've got this crazy, extreme,
0:23:59 > 0:24:02brutal set of circumstances.
0:24:02 > 0:24:06But they are given shape and they are made sense of by the knowledge
0:24:06 > 0:24:10that other men have been here before
0:24:10 > 0:24:12and experienced similar things.
0:24:12 > 0:24:14It's archetypal.
0:24:15 > 0:24:18People have done it before and no doubt will do it again.
0:24:24 > 0:24:26As the third part of In Parenthesis closes,
0:24:26 > 0:24:30the exhausted troops hunker down for their first freezing night
0:24:30 > 0:24:31on the front line.
0:24:33 > 0:24:35The terrible reckoning that awaits them,
0:24:35 > 0:24:37and that awaited David Jones,
0:24:37 > 0:24:39is drawing ever closer.
0:24:58 > 0:25:01Six years after the end of the war, David Jones was ready to take
0:25:01 > 0:25:03the next step on the personal
0:25:03 > 0:25:07and artistic journey towards the writing of In Parenthesis.
0:25:10 > 0:25:13To do this, he would leave England behind
0:25:13 > 0:25:17to live and work in an isolated and ancient Welsh landscape.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28Capel-y-ffin is a tiny hamlet nestled in a valley
0:25:28 > 0:25:31on the Welsh borders near Abergavenny.
0:25:34 > 0:25:37It was here that Eric Gill had set-up his latest commune
0:25:37 > 0:25:39in a former monastery.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42A place of beauty, hardship and dedication.
0:25:42 > 0:25:45It's a timeless setting that would go on to haunt
0:25:45 > 0:25:48the work of David Jones for the rest of his life.
0:26:00 > 0:26:03So you've got this sort of deracinated Welshman, growing up
0:26:03 > 0:26:06in south-east London, who kind of knows that Wales is important,
0:26:06 > 0:26:08that it's the matter of his being,
0:26:08 > 0:26:11but has never really been there, doesn't really know,
0:26:11 > 0:26:14but when you go to Capel-y-ffin, when you go up into those mountains,
0:26:14 > 0:26:18he has to encounter a different sense of time.
0:26:18 > 0:26:22This is old Wales. This is the Wales of Arthur.
0:26:29 > 0:26:31Immediately, you see him
0:26:31 > 0:26:35trying to make sense of himself as a Welshman, himself as a nascent
0:26:35 > 0:26:39poet, and himself as someone in a very, very old landscape.
0:26:39 > 0:26:41All at the same time.
0:26:41 > 0:26:44It's extraordinary territory to begin to inhabit.
0:26:50 > 0:26:52When the time came to write In Parenthesis,
0:26:52 > 0:26:57David Jones drew on the ancient history and stories of Wales
0:26:57 > 0:27:00to give his book shape and meaning.
0:27:04 > 0:27:08Each part of In Parenthesis was introduced with a little
0:27:08 > 0:27:12quotation from the earliest Welsh poem called Y Gododdin.
0:27:14 > 0:27:18This is a tale of a terrible military defeat and the
0:27:18 > 0:27:22concept of the poem is that only the poet survived to tell the tale.
0:27:24 > 0:27:29The relevance is heartbreaking because here he is - a survivor
0:27:29 > 0:27:35of the First World War, who's come home and is writing a poem about it.
0:27:36 > 0:27:40He's showing right at the very beginning that he's not going
0:27:40 > 0:27:44to shut his mind to history and the brutality of it.
0:27:44 > 0:27:47And, in fact, that's where his muse is coming from,
0:27:47 > 0:27:51is the memory of total defeat.
0:27:52 > 0:27:59ARTILLERY FIRE, BOMBS RUMBLE
0:28:16 > 0:28:20As Christmas 1915 dawned, David Jones and his comrades found
0:28:20 > 0:28:24themselves in the freezing front-line trenches of northern France.
0:28:24 > 0:28:27This was a so-called quiet sector.
0:28:27 > 0:28:31In six months here, the Royal Welch Fusiliers lost only 32 men.
0:28:37 > 0:28:41The tense stalemate gave David Jones time to get his sketchbook out.
0:28:43 > 0:28:44Throughout the war,
0:28:44 > 0:28:49his rapid drawings captured the day-to-day reality of soldiering.
0:28:50 > 0:28:56In In Parenthesis, this artist's eye for detail inspires an unparalleled
0:28:56 > 0:29:00literary evocation of the mundane hardships of front-line life.
0:29:06 > 0:29:09Even in a meticulously recreated trench system,
0:29:09 > 0:29:11it's very hard to get a real sense of what life in the front-line
0:29:11 > 0:29:14trenches would have been like.
0:29:14 > 0:29:17But David Jones gets closer than anyone to making you feel like
0:29:17 > 0:29:19you've really lived it.
0:29:19 > 0:29:23The cold, the boredom, the sporadic terror, the terrible food,
0:29:23 > 0:29:27the humour, the uncertainty and sheer strangeness of it all.
0:29:30 > 0:29:33What I love most, I think, about In Parenthesis,
0:29:33 > 0:29:38is the level of detail which you simply never see in Owen
0:29:38 > 0:29:42and Sassoon and Graves and those officer-class poets.
0:29:42 > 0:29:46So, for example, there's the passage where the Lance Corporal
0:29:46 > 0:29:49turns up, dishing out the rations
0:29:49 > 0:29:53and the description of the cheese in there as being hairy.
0:29:53 > 0:29:56And it's the most unappetising piece of cheese you can ever
0:29:56 > 0:30:01imagine, but it just gives you that sense of what it was like to
0:30:01 > 0:30:04be a soldier in the First World War in terms of what they ate,
0:30:04 > 0:30:06what they spoke about in the trenches.
0:30:06 > 0:30:10That daily life in the trenches is what In Parenthesis gives you,
0:30:10 > 0:30:14I think, better than any other First World War text I've read.
0:30:25 > 0:30:28If In Parenthesis has a keystone passage,
0:30:28 > 0:30:33it comes here in Part Four, right in the middle of the book.
0:30:33 > 0:30:36A tour de force set piece known as Dai's Boast.
0:30:38 > 0:30:42A group of old soldiers are sitting around in the trench,
0:30:42 > 0:30:44bragging about the battles they have seen.
0:30:44 > 0:30:47Then another soldier, a Welsh Private
0:30:47 > 0:30:50known as Dai Greatcoat, speaks up.
0:30:56 > 0:31:02This Dai adjusts his slipping shoulder straps, wraps close his
0:31:02 > 0:31:06misfit outsize greatcoat -
0:31:06 > 0:31:09he articulates his English with an alien care.
0:31:12 > 0:31:16My Fathers were with the Black Prinse of Wales
0:31:16 > 0:31:19at the passion of the blind Bohemian king.
0:31:19 > 0:31:21They served in these fields.
0:31:21 > 0:31:24I was with Abel when his brother found him,
0:31:24 > 0:31:26under the green tree.
0:31:26 > 0:31:29I built a shit-house for Artaxerxes.
0:31:29 > 0:31:31I was the spear in Balin's hand
0:31:31 > 0:31:34that made waste King Pellam's land.
0:31:34 > 0:31:35I was in Michael's trench
0:31:35 > 0:31:38when Lucifer bulged his primal salient out.
0:31:40 > 0:31:42That caused it,
0:31:42 > 0:31:44that upset the joy-cart
0:31:44 > 0:31:46and three parts waste.
0:31:48 > 0:31:51You ought to ask:
0:31:51 > 0:31:53why,
0:31:53 > 0:31:58what is this,
0:31:58 > 0:32:00what's the meaning of this.
0:32:05 > 0:32:08Dai's Boast is the centre of the poem.
0:32:08 > 0:32:13And its centricity implies it's very important.
0:32:14 > 0:32:19It is the entire poem in microcosm, if you can say that.
0:32:19 > 0:32:23It's not a warrior boast like a boast before battle,
0:32:23 > 0:32:25"I can kill more people than you can."
0:32:25 > 0:32:31It's a bardic boast and in it, Dai telescopes back through history
0:32:31 > 0:32:35and makes all these past moments present and broadens
0:32:35 > 0:32:41his identity from that of a named Welsh Private to the universal
0:32:41 > 0:32:45soldier, the archetypal soldier, kind of everyman as a soldier.
0:32:47 > 0:32:50But he also poses an explicit question.
0:32:50 > 0:32:51'You ought to ask: Why, what is this,
0:32:51 > 0:32:53'what's the meaning of this.'
0:32:53 > 0:32:56And he's talking about war.
0:32:56 > 0:32:58Or is he?
0:32:59 > 0:33:02This is a book about life.
0:33:02 > 0:33:06If war has no meaning, neither does life
0:33:06 > 0:33:08because war is a part of life.
0:33:10 > 0:33:13So, he asks the question, what's the meaning?
0:33:13 > 0:33:16Is there any meaning to this? Is it all absurd? Is it chaos?
0:33:16 > 0:33:18And he stops there.
0:33:19 > 0:33:22The answer to that question, or an answer to that question, is
0:33:22 > 0:33:25provided by the Queen of the Woods later at the end of the poem.
0:33:44 > 0:33:48David Jones's personal quest to find meaning in war continued
0:33:48 > 0:33:50throughout the 1920s.
0:33:50 > 0:33:54Slowly, he was ordering his thoughts and shaping his ideas.
0:34:00 > 0:34:05One thing was constant through these years in his life and art.
0:34:05 > 0:34:10It brought him to the monastic island of Caldey in West Wales.
0:34:10 > 0:34:12And when the time came to write In Parenthesis,
0:34:12 > 0:34:14it would be a key element.
0:34:18 > 0:34:24Christianity had always been a major part of David Jones's life.
0:34:24 > 0:34:28But in the early 1920s he converted to Catholicism.
0:34:28 > 0:34:33That conversion was inspired, in part, by a wartime event.
0:34:35 > 0:34:39One freezing day in northern France, David Jones found himself
0:34:39 > 0:34:43scavenging for firewood among some shattered farm buildings.
0:34:43 > 0:34:46Peering through a crack in a seemingly empty barn,
0:34:46 > 0:34:49he saw something that he would never forget.
0:34:49 > 0:34:51In front of him, lit by candles,
0:34:51 > 0:34:55a Catholic priest was conducting mass for a handful of soldiers
0:34:55 > 0:34:57with draped ammunition cases for an alter.
0:35:00 > 0:35:03This vision of peace just a stone's throw from the front line
0:35:03 > 0:35:06was, David Jones said, a great marvel.
0:35:06 > 0:35:08Like something from a Celtic tale.
0:35:08 > 0:35:12It became one of the most numinous experiences of his entire life.
0:35:21 > 0:35:25David Jones recorded the scene he saw that day in a sketch,
0:35:25 > 0:35:29and it went on to find a different expression in In Parenthesis.
0:35:32 > 0:35:34You have to understand that David Jones
0:35:34 > 0:35:38is writing as a Christian and a devout Catholic.
0:35:38 > 0:35:42I think he sees soldiering as a kind of mass, in a sense, that the
0:35:42 > 0:35:46whole body of the soldiers are all together, dying together,
0:35:46 > 0:35:48living together and he sees everything
0:35:48 > 0:35:50in the context of the mass.
0:35:50 > 0:35:53I mean, this is a very dramatic poem.
0:35:53 > 0:35:56You can see that it's naturally dramatic in the same
0:35:56 > 0:35:58way that the mass is.
0:36:11 > 0:36:14On Caldy Island, David Jones painted some
0:36:14 > 0:36:16of his most celebrated seascapes.
0:36:18 > 0:36:22When the time came to write In Parenthesis, he would return
0:36:22 > 0:36:25here repeatedly, finding in the peace and seclusion of the island
0:36:25 > 0:36:30a safe place in which to explore his unsettling memories of war.
0:36:57 > 0:37:01After six months in the trenches of northern France, David Jones
0:37:01 > 0:37:03and his battalion left the front line.
0:37:05 > 0:37:08They didn't know where they would be sent next or what
0:37:08 > 0:37:11they would find when they got there,
0:37:11 > 0:37:14only that the war was pulling them, in David Jones's phrase,
0:37:14 > 0:37:17towards the magnetic South.
0:37:23 > 0:37:26When we re-join In Parenthesis, time has passed.
0:37:26 > 0:37:30Insects are thick in the air, the soldiers mop their brows.
0:37:30 > 0:37:33David Jones doesn't name seasons any more than he names places,
0:37:33 > 0:37:37but it's clear that summer has come to the Western Front.
0:37:37 > 0:37:40After the intensity of life in the trenches,
0:37:40 > 0:37:43the soldiers could relax a little during these weeks
0:37:43 > 0:37:46and the style of In Parenthesis is also less intense here, less
0:37:46 > 0:37:51fragmented, with several passages of beautiful flowing lyricism.
0:37:51 > 0:37:54John Ball and his companions go swimming,
0:37:54 > 0:37:57chat in the village streets, stretch out in the sun.
0:38:00 > 0:38:03MEN LAUGH
0:38:05 > 0:38:09The parade was for eight o'clock for the divisional baths.
0:38:09 > 0:38:11They marched lightly in clean fatigue.
0:38:13 > 0:38:17And there was comfort having huckaback tucked around your neck
0:38:17 > 0:38:19and everybody talking a lot.
0:38:20 > 0:38:23And the day was warm like going to the sea,
0:38:23 > 0:38:26and away from, a little further from the line
0:38:26 > 0:38:28with each unputtied step.
0:38:29 > 0:38:34He gave them a long rest for lunch, sitting in the June sun
0:38:34 > 0:38:38and a grassy bank with a million daisies spangled
0:38:38 > 0:38:41and buttercup sheen made warm glint on piled arms.
0:38:43 > 0:38:46They packed up at 4.30 to be back in time
0:38:46 > 0:38:49for 'A' company's concert outside The Dry.
0:38:49 > 0:38:53PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
0:38:53 > 0:38:56CSM Trotter sang Thora for his second encore.
0:38:56 > 0:38:59The long Wykehamist subaltern
0:38:59 > 0:39:03looked sad for the score they put before him, but their applause
0:39:03 > 0:39:04filled up the night
0:39:04 > 0:39:07and the orchard where the piano was set up.
0:39:10 > 0:39:17PIANO PLAYS, APPLAUSE
0:39:21 > 0:39:27RUMBLING AND CRASHING
0:39:32 > 0:39:35As we near the end of In Parenthesis, John Ball
0:39:35 > 0:39:39and his fellow soldiers march on into what they instinctively
0:39:39 > 0:39:42know will be their place of reckoning.
0:39:42 > 0:39:44Death's sure meeting place, David Jones calls it,
0:39:44 > 0:39:47quoting Y Gododdin.
0:39:51 > 0:39:54This is the small village of Mametz -
0:39:54 > 0:39:56a name now as grimly-familiar in Wales
0:39:56 > 0:39:59as the disasters of Aberfan or Senghenydd.
0:39:59 > 0:40:01It's a beautiful enough scene today,
0:40:01 > 0:40:04but as David Jones approached it in 1916,
0:40:04 > 0:40:07the village had already been razed to the ground by war.
0:40:07 > 0:40:10As the soldiers of In Parenthesis also enter this area,
0:40:10 > 0:40:13an unease surfaces in the writing once more.
0:40:13 > 0:40:16Normality undermined by impending violence,
0:40:16 > 0:40:19a dread hanging in the air.
0:40:30 > 0:40:34On the eve of battle, David Jones and his battalion bivouacked just
0:40:34 > 0:40:36over the hill from Mametz Wood,
0:40:36 > 0:40:40in a place they nicknamed Happy Valley.
0:40:40 > 0:40:44In In Parenthesis, John Ball and his friends chat here,
0:40:44 > 0:40:47try to calm themselves with ordinary talk of home,
0:40:47 > 0:40:51but ordinary things have lost their innocence.
0:40:51 > 0:40:56Ambulances toil up hills, the setting sun gilds shrapnel bursts,
0:40:56 > 0:41:00the sound of hammering betokens the making of coffins.
0:41:00 > 0:41:05HAMMER BANGS
0:41:05 > 0:41:07And the noise of carpenters,
0:41:07 > 0:41:10as though they builded some scaffold for a hanging,
0:41:10 > 0:41:12hammered hollowly.
0:41:12 > 0:41:16John Ball heard the noise where he squatted to clean his rifle,
0:41:16 > 0:41:19which hammering brought him disquiet
0:41:19 > 0:41:22more than the foreboding gunfire which gathered intensity
0:41:22 > 0:41:23with each half-hour.
0:41:23 > 0:41:27HAMMERING SPEEDS UP
0:41:27 > 0:41:31He wished they'd stop that hollow tap-tapping.
0:41:42 > 0:41:48At 4.00am on 10th July, 1916, Private 22579 Jones was
0:41:48 > 0:41:50called to his assembly position.
0:41:50 > 0:41:53He was about to take part in one of the bloodiest
0:41:53 > 0:41:55actions of the entire Somme Offensive.
0:41:57 > 0:42:0212 years would pass before he could begin to write about what
0:42:02 > 0:42:04he witnessed that day.
0:42:35 > 0:42:39Many poets of the First World War wrote on the front line or
0:42:39 > 0:42:42shortly after.
0:42:42 > 0:42:46But it wasn't until he was 32 years old that David Jones was
0:42:46 > 0:42:48ready to begin writing In Parenthesis.
0:42:56 > 0:42:58That moment came while he was here on holiday
0:42:58 > 0:43:02with his parents at Portslade near Brighton.
0:43:07 > 0:43:09David Jones had been painting seascapes
0:43:09 > 0:43:13and one in particular seemed to be a declaration.
0:43:13 > 0:43:17Manawydan's Glass Door sees Jones looking across the English Channel
0:43:17 > 0:43:20towards France and the past.
0:43:27 > 0:43:30The Welsh legend that the painting's title refers to
0:43:30 > 0:43:34is quoted by David Jones at the very start of In Parenthesis.
0:43:37 > 0:43:40Evil betide me if I do not open the door to know
0:43:40 > 0:43:43if that is true which is said concerning it.
0:43:43 > 0:43:45So he opened the door.
0:43:50 > 0:43:52The opening epigraph of In Parenthesis
0:43:52 > 0:43:57is from the medieval Welsh legend cycle, the Mabinogion.
0:43:57 > 0:44:02The context for the quote is that the Welsh have come from Ireland
0:44:02 > 0:44:04where they've been defeated
0:44:04 > 0:44:08and they're on the island of Grassholm in Pembrokeshire
0:44:08 > 0:44:11and they're there for 80 years feasting.
0:44:11 > 0:44:16They were warned not to open a certain door that's on the island,
0:44:16 > 0:44:19but one of the company does.
0:44:19 > 0:44:23As the door is opened, they remember all their griefs,
0:44:23 > 0:44:26then they have to move on from the island where
0:44:26 > 0:44:29they've basically been living in a fantasy land.
0:44:31 > 0:44:37So, it's the setting-in of historical memory after this
0:44:37 > 0:44:43kind of parallel world of fantasy and of not knowing or trying
0:44:43 > 0:44:47not to remember that they have been totally defeated.
0:44:57 > 0:44:59Once he had begun,
0:44:59 > 0:45:02it took David Jones four years to write In Parenthesis.
0:45:04 > 0:45:08After finishing it and reliving his wartime experiences,
0:45:08 > 0:45:10he suffered a mental breakdown.
0:45:22 > 0:45:24RAPID GUNFIRE
0:45:29 > 0:45:34The memory lets escape what is over and above.
0:45:34 > 0:45:39As spilled bitterness, unmeasured poured out, and again drenched down.
0:45:39 > 0:45:41Demoniac-pouring...
0:45:43 > 0:45:45..souls passed through torrent..
0:45:47 > 0:45:49..and the whole situation is intolerable.
0:46:03 > 0:46:05The final part of In Parenthesis
0:46:05 > 0:46:08is perhaps the most lyrical and powerful.
0:46:08 > 0:46:10If David Jones had written just this one section,
0:46:10 > 0:46:13I think it would have still be considered one of the great books
0:46:13 > 0:46:14about the war.
0:46:14 > 0:46:16Yet, in the context of what's gone before,
0:46:16 > 0:46:18it gains an extraordinary power,
0:46:18 > 0:46:22as the threads and themes of the entire work are drawn together.
0:46:22 > 0:46:25This is when we learn the fate of the characters
0:46:25 > 0:46:27we met at the start and the fate of John Ball,
0:46:27 > 0:46:30which is to say the fate of David Jones himself.
0:46:39 > 0:46:44The bloody climax of In Parenthesis takes place in Mametz Wood.
0:46:45 > 0:46:50The overgrown 200-acre woodland was a daunting military objective
0:46:50 > 0:46:53and, to the soldiers, a menacing wall of gloom.
0:46:57 > 0:46:59In the original plans for the Battle of the Somme,
0:46:59 > 0:47:02it was decided not to try and take Mametz Wood.
0:47:02 > 0:47:05Because it was deemed to be too difficult.
0:47:05 > 0:47:07Whichever way you attack the wood,
0:47:07 > 0:47:10you would have to go down the slope, into a gully
0:47:10 > 0:47:12and then up a fairly steep slope.
0:47:12 > 0:47:16And then go across open ground, before finally reaching the wood.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19And what was actually in the wood was unknown at the time.
0:47:19 > 0:47:20One could predict what might be there,
0:47:20 > 0:47:22what defences have been put in place,
0:47:22 > 0:47:24how many machine-gun posts there were, etc.
0:47:24 > 0:47:27But nobody had any idea, because it was all hidden from view.
0:47:30 > 0:47:31EXPLOSION RUMBLES
0:47:33 > 0:47:37As Part Seven opens, we find John Ball and his comrades,
0:47:37 > 0:47:39huddled in a ditch.
0:47:39 > 0:47:42Agonisingly awaiting the signal to go over the top.
0:47:45 > 0:47:48Shells from the screaming German barrage burst among them,
0:47:48 > 0:47:50bringing carnage.
0:47:50 > 0:47:54Machine-gun fire from the wood pits the very lip of their shelter.
0:48:01 > 0:48:02WHISTLES BLOW
0:48:02 > 0:48:04MANY VOICES SHOUT
0:48:04 > 0:48:05Come on, lads.
0:48:13 > 0:48:17John Ball makes it out of the trench and advances.
0:48:17 > 0:48:20Exposed on open ground, the flat roof of the world,
0:48:20 > 0:48:23more of his companions are killed by machine-gun fire.
0:48:28 > 0:48:30Mr Jenkins sinks to his knees,
0:48:30 > 0:48:33his upper body swaying before falling into the ground.
0:48:39 > 0:48:41Other characters we have come to know
0:48:41 > 0:48:44also die before even reaching the wood.
0:48:44 > 0:48:49Aneirin Lewis, Fatty Weavel, Colonel Dell.
0:48:50 > 0:48:53The obscene carnival of death that David Jones conjures here
0:48:53 > 0:48:56is surely one of the most striking pieces of writing
0:48:56 > 0:48:57of the whole war.
0:49:03 > 0:49:07Sweet sister death has gone debauched today
0:49:07 > 0:49:11and stalks on this high ground with strumpet confidence,
0:49:11 > 0:49:14makes no coy veiling of her appetite
0:49:14 > 0:49:17but leers from you to me with all her parts discovered.
0:49:20 > 0:49:24By one and one the line gaps, where her fancy will...
0:49:26 > 0:49:30..however they may howl for their virginity, she holds them.
0:49:34 > 0:49:37"But sweet sister death has gone debauched today
0:49:37 > 0:49:41"and stalks on this high ground with strumpet confidence."
0:49:42 > 0:49:46It's incredibly unsettling.
0:49:46 > 0:49:50Suddenly, the matriarch becomes the grim reaper.
0:49:50 > 0:49:52She's gone crazy.
0:49:52 > 0:49:55She's pulling them out of the line to kill them.
0:49:56 > 0:49:59Something's gone very, very wrong at this moment.
0:49:59 > 0:50:01Biblically wrong.
0:50:01 > 0:50:03It's apocalyptic.
0:50:09 > 0:50:11Somehow, John Ball makes it into the woods,
0:50:11 > 0:50:14where he endures the full horror of close-quarters combat.
0:50:14 > 0:50:17Soldiers caught on barbed wire are slaughtered by machine guns.
0:50:17 > 0:50:19The wounded are blown up on their stretchers.
0:50:19 > 0:50:23The severed head of '72 Morgan grins like the Cheshire cat.
0:50:23 > 0:50:27The fractured language here strains to capture the fear
0:50:27 > 0:50:30and confusion of the Royal British recruits.
0:50:30 > 0:50:33John Ball and his comrades advance, fall back,
0:50:33 > 0:50:35lose all sense of direction.
0:50:46 > 0:50:49Soon, you realise that hours have passed.
0:50:49 > 0:50:52John Ball has been fighting for an entire summer's day.
0:50:55 > 0:50:57In a seeming lull in the battle,
0:50:57 > 0:51:01he pushes on into the core and very navel of the wood.
0:51:01 > 0:51:04As though you'd come on ancient stillnesses
0:51:04 > 0:51:06in his most interior place.
0:51:11 > 0:51:15But then out of the silence, a gun erupts.
0:51:15 > 0:51:18And violence is visited upon Private Ball himself.
0:51:21 > 0:51:22GUNSHOT CRACKS
0:51:34 > 0:51:37And to Private Ball it came as a rigid beam of great weight
0:51:37 > 0:51:39flailed about his calves,
0:51:39 > 0:51:42caught from behind by ballista-bulk let fly
0:51:42 > 0:51:45or aft-beam slewed to clout gunnel-walker
0:51:45 > 0:51:50below below below.
0:51:53 > 0:51:56He thought it disproportionate in its violence
0:51:56 > 0:51:58considering the fragility of us.
0:52:01 > 0:52:03Warm fluid percolates between his toes
0:52:03 > 0:52:07and his left boot fills as when you trade in a puddle.
0:52:11 > 0:52:13He crawled away in the opposite direction.
0:52:19 > 0:52:22For John Ball the battle is over,
0:52:22 > 0:52:24as it was for David Jones.
0:52:24 > 0:52:27Shot in the leg, he was stretchered off to a first-aid post.
0:52:27 > 0:52:30In Parenthesis, too, is nearly at an end,
0:52:30 > 0:52:33but not before one of the most haunting and beautiful passages
0:52:33 > 0:52:35of war poetry written.
0:52:35 > 0:52:38Once again, the real world of the battlefield
0:52:38 > 0:52:40gives way to the ancient as a mythic figure,
0:52:40 > 0:52:43the Queen Of The Woods, appears.
0:52:43 > 0:52:45She has come to honour the fallen men.
0:52:45 > 0:52:49Not with medals or titles, but with garlands of flowers.
0:52:56 > 0:53:01The Queen of the Woods has cut bright boughs of various flowering.
0:53:01 > 0:53:04These knew her influential eyes.
0:53:04 > 0:53:08Her rewarding hands can pluck for each their fragile prize.
0:53:09 > 0:53:12She speaks to them according to precedence.
0:53:12 > 0:53:15She knows what's due to this elect society.
0:53:16 > 0:53:18She can choose 12 gentle-men.
0:53:20 > 0:53:24She knows who is most lord between the high trees and on the open down.
0:53:25 > 0:53:28Some, she gives white berries.
0:53:28 > 0:53:29Some, she gives brown.
0:53:31 > 0:53:34Emil has a curious crown
0:53:34 > 0:53:36it's made of golden saxifrage.
0:53:37 > 0:53:40Fatty wears sweet-briar,
0:53:40 > 0:53:42he will reign with her for a thousand years
0:53:43 > 0:53:46For Balder she reaches high to fetch his.
0:53:48 > 0:53:50Ulrich smiles for his myrtle wand.
0:53:53 > 0:53:56That swine Lillywhite has daisies to his chain -
0:53:56 > 0:53:59you'd hardly credit it.
0:53:59 > 0:54:01She plaits torques of equal splendour
0:54:01 > 0:54:03for Mr Jenkins and Billy Crower.
0:54:05 > 0:54:08Hansel with Gronwy share dog-violets for a palm,
0:54:08 > 0:54:12where they lie in serious embrace beneath the twisted tripod.
0:54:13 > 0:54:16Sion gets St John's Wort.
0:54:16 > 0:54:17That's fair enough.
0:54:19 > 0:54:23Dai Great-coat she can't find him anywhere.
0:54:23 > 0:54:27She calls both high and low.
0:54:27 > 0:54:29She had a very special one for him.
0:54:31 > 0:54:33She carries Aneirin-in-the-nullah,
0:54:33 > 0:54:35a rowan sprig for the glory of Guenedota.
0:54:38 > 0:54:40You didn't hear what she had to say to him
0:54:40 > 0:54:42because she was careful
0:54:42 > 0:54:44for the Disciplines of the Wars.
0:54:54 > 0:54:57The Queen Of The Woods bestowing garlands and honours
0:54:57 > 0:54:59on the ordinary men.
0:54:59 > 0:55:04For me, that reflects straight back to his dedication when he writes,
0:55:04 > 0:55:09"This writing is for my friends, in mind of all common and hidden men,
0:55:09 > 0:55:11"And of the secret princes."
0:55:11 > 0:55:13And I think that's such an important thing here.
0:55:13 > 0:55:16It's the ordinary men, it's the privates,
0:55:16 > 0:55:20it's those who had the hardest time of it,
0:55:20 > 0:55:22and the greatest loss of life,
0:55:22 > 0:55:27to whom he wants to, through this writing itself, bestow great honour,
0:55:27 > 0:55:29and love and affection.
0:55:33 > 0:55:39She delivers judgements on the goodness of infantrymen
0:55:39 > 0:55:41through the language of flowers.
0:55:41 > 0:55:44And this includes Germans.
0:55:44 > 0:55:45Dai Great-coat asks the question,
0:55:45 > 0:55:48"What is the meaning of war? What's the meaning of life?"
0:55:48 > 0:55:55The Queen Of The Woods implicitly answers it by saying goodness.
0:55:55 > 0:55:56Human goodness.
0:56:09 > 0:56:11And so, with the wounded Private Ball
0:56:11 > 0:56:13crawling towards stretcher bearers,
0:56:13 > 0:56:16and the Queen Of The Woods bestowing her garlands,
0:56:16 > 0:56:19one of the truly great books about the First World War,
0:56:19 > 0:56:22or any war, comes to an end.
0:56:24 > 0:56:26But what happened next for its author?
0:56:33 > 0:56:37The wounded David Jones was shipped to a convalescent home in England.
0:56:37 > 0:56:40But he soon returned to the front line.
0:56:40 > 0:56:43In the end, it was trench fever that ended his war,
0:56:43 > 0:56:45but not before he had served
0:56:45 > 0:56:48for longer than any other British writer.
0:56:55 > 0:57:02David Jones' reputation as a artist grew throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
0:57:02 > 0:57:04He could be reluctant to sell his work, though,
0:57:04 > 0:57:06and almost always he was poor.
0:57:09 > 0:57:11In Parenthesis was published in 1937
0:57:11 > 0:57:15and won the major literary award of its day,
0:57:15 > 0:57:17but shortly after the Second World War
0:57:17 > 0:57:20David Jones suffered a further mental breakdown.
0:57:24 > 0:57:25He never married.
0:57:27 > 0:57:30As the years passed he became more reclusive,
0:57:30 > 0:57:33living in a rented room in Harrow,
0:57:33 > 0:57:36his studio, writing room, bedroom and living space.
0:57:40 > 0:57:44In 1952, David Jones published second long poem.
0:57:44 > 0:57:46The Anathemata.
0:57:46 > 0:57:48Regarded by many as another masterpiece.
0:57:51 > 0:57:56Finally, word and image came together in David Jones' late work.
0:57:56 > 0:58:01Beautiful painted inscriptions in English, Latin and Welsh.
0:58:09 > 0:58:11David Jones died in 1974,
0:58:11 > 0:58:15in Calvary Nursing Home, Harrow, aged 78.
0:58:20 > 0:58:24He was buried just a few hundred yards from the house he was born in.
0:58:24 > 0:58:28His memorial stone was carved by a Ditchling craftsman.
0:58:29 > 0:58:33For the man who wrote the book, and the boy who went to war,
0:58:33 > 0:58:36the circle of life was complete.