0:00:03 > 0:00:07Some of the most moving poetry in English came out of the First World War.
0:00:07 > 0:00:11When we think of the war poets,
0:00:11 > 0:00:16we probably have in mind Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon.
0:00:16 > 0:00:19But there is a less well-known soldier-poet
0:00:19 > 0:00:21who is quite unlike any of the others.
0:00:23 > 0:00:27He found the war invigorating, at least some of the time.
0:00:27 > 0:00:31For a while, it actually improved his health.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35He was one of those who appreciated, at times even enjoyed,
0:00:35 > 0:00:38the absurdity of war.
0:00:38 > 0:00:43But he was also an accomplished composer, who wrote songs while serving in the trenches.
0:00:46 > 0:00:48And while most war poets were officers,
0:00:48 > 0:00:53he fought as a regular front-line soldier, a private.
0:00:55 > 0:00:57And this is our man.
0:00:57 > 0:01:02He's Ivor Bertie Gurney, the son of a Gloucester tailor,
0:01:02 > 0:01:06and he fought in the war. He was shot, he was gassed,
0:01:06 > 0:01:08he was invalided out, and he spent
0:01:08 > 0:01:13the last 15 years of his life in a mental asylum,
0:01:13 > 0:01:18and it was there that he returned obsessively, compulsively,
0:01:18 > 0:01:21to his wartime experiences.
0:01:21 > 0:01:26My contention is that the body of work he wrote there in the asylum
0:01:26 > 0:01:30stands alongside the work, the achievement,
0:01:30 > 0:01:33of any of his contemporary soldier-poets.
0:01:46 > 0:01:47People who have heard of Ivor Gurney
0:01:47 > 0:01:51might know him as the composer of polite but beautiful art song,
0:01:51 > 0:01:55and as a poet who produced a couple of volumes of rare work
0:01:55 > 0:01:57before he went mad and died in an asylum.
0:01:59 > 0:02:02But recently, we have been starting to explore
0:02:02 > 0:02:03a remarkable treasure trove.
0:02:04 > 0:02:07Gurney wrote over 1,000 poems in the asylum,
0:02:07 > 0:02:12now preserved in the county archives in his home city of Gloucester.
0:02:12 > 0:02:17Those poems can be clumsy and repetitive. For many decades,
0:02:17 > 0:02:21they were commonly dismissed as the sad product of mental decline.
0:02:21 > 0:02:23Most are unpublished,
0:02:23 > 0:02:26but then you find a masterpiece like The Silent One,
0:02:26 > 0:02:29where Gurney does the unthinkable.
0:02:29 > 0:02:33In the heat of battle, he talks back to an officer.
0:02:33 > 0:02:37It is a brutally candid self-representation
0:02:37 > 0:02:41and it shows a poet more interested in survival than obedience
0:02:41 > 0:02:43and derring-do.
0:02:43 > 0:02:46There it is. That's wonderful.
0:02:46 > 0:02:50Crossings out, as well. Gurney crossed out
0:02:50 > 0:02:55"'Do you think you might crawl through there, Gurney? There's a hole.'
0:02:55 > 0:02:57In the afraid darkness, shot at,
0:02:57 > 0:02:59"I smiled and politely replied,
0:02:59 > 0:03:03"'I'm afraid not, sir.' There was no hole, no way to be seen."
0:03:07 > 0:03:12Even 100 years on, the trenches of the First World War can still
0:03:12 > 0:03:14be traced on the fields of Flanders and Picardy.
0:03:16 > 0:03:20When Ivor Gurney as part of the 2nd/5th Gloucesters
0:03:20 > 0:03:25was on his way to France, the Allies had already been fighting
0:03:25 > 0:03:29for two years, and stories back from the front were grim.
0:03:29 > 0:03:34Gurney and his battalion, the 2nd/5ths, arrived at Southampton docks.
0:03:34 > 0:03:36They had several hours to spare,
0:03:36 > 0:03:38which they spent wandering around on dockside,
0:03:38 > 0:03:43and they may have been discussing rumours of German submarine activity in the Channel,
0:03:43 > 0:03:48or stories they had heard of the horrors of conditions in the trenches.
0:03:48 > 0:03:51They would certainly have been under no illusions
0:03:51 > 0:03:53as to what awaited them in France.
0:03:57 > 0:04:00So we can only guess at their mood as the 800 men
0:04:00 > 0:04:05and their officers filed on board His Majesty's Troopship - HMT 861,
0:04:05 > 0:04:08each laden with 80lb of kit.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13It was 24th May, 1916, and at last,
0:04:13 > 0:04:15they were headed to the Western Front.
0:04:20 > 0:04:23After the 2nd/5th arrived at Le Havre,
0:04:23 > 0:04:28they rested for a couple of days before boarding a train to the front-line.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32They were destined for the Fauquisart-Laventie Sector
0:04:32 > 0:04:34near the border with Belgium.
0:04:34 > 0:04:38Soon, Gurney would see flares lighting up the night sky
0:04:38 > 0:04:41and hear the distant thunder of guns.
0:04:45 > 0:04:47The battalion was almost ready for war.
0:04:47 > 0:04:51Their first task was to relieve a contingent of the London Welsh.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57I'm meeting with Piet Chielens from the In Flanders Museum
0:04:57 > 0:05:00who is an authority on Gurney and the Gloucester Regiment.
0:05:02 > 0:05:04So the Gloucesters go in to the trenches,
0:05:04 > 0:05:09"first time in" as Gurney calls it, in early June 1916.
0:05:09 > 0:05:13They are met by this Welsh Regiment, and Gurney,
0:05:13 > 0:05:16maybe feeling apprehensive, understandably,
0:05:16 > 0:05:19finds that this is going to be one of the most memorable evenings
0:05:19 > 0:05:22of his life, not for the reasons that he would perhaps expect?
0:05:22 > 0:05:26No, no, because he's listening to music all of a sudden,
0:05:26 > 0:05:32to Welsh folk singing and he is discussing Shakespeare
0:05:32 > 0:05:38with these guys so it's quite unexpected to have, all of a sudden,
0:05:38 > 0:05:43this wealth of culture landing on him while they are going in
0:05:43 > 0:05:49for the first time, so there's this double excitement, all of a sudden,
0:05:49 > 0:05:52and it's so hard for him to cope with it that he has
0:05:52 > 0:05:54to write about it, and to repeat it.
0:05:57 > 0:06:01After the dread tales and red yarns of the Line
0:06:01 > 0:06:04Anything might have come to us
0:06:04 > 0:06:08But the divine afterglow brought us up to a Welsh colony
0:06:08 > 0:06:10Hiding in sandbagged ditches
0:06:10 > 0:06:14Whispering consolatory soft foreign things
0:06:14 > 0:06:18Then we were taken into low huts, candle-lit
0:06:18 > 0:06:21Shaded close by slitten oil sheets
0:06:21 > 0:06:24And there, but boys gave us kind welcome
0:06:24 > 0:06:27So that we looked out as from the edge of home
0:06:27 > 0:06:32Sang us Welsh things, and changed all former notions
0:06:32 > 0:06:35To human hopeful things.
0:06:35 > 0:06:38And the next day's guns nor any Line pains
0:06:38 > 0:06:41Ever quite could blot out
0:06:41 > 0:06:45That strangely beautiful entry to War's rout.
0:06:50 > 0:06:53Ivor Gurney was born in Gloucester in 1890.
0:06:53 > 0:06:56His father David ran a small tailoring business,
0:06:56 > 0:06:59while his highly strung mother, Florence, kept house
0:06:59 > 0:07:03and helped out with the sewing.
0:07:03 > 0:07:05His father was an old-fashioned countryman,
0:07:05 > 0:07:08who taught his children the names of plants and wildlife,
0:07:08 > 0:07:11instilling in them a love of the natural world.
0:07:11 > 0:07:16Prodigiously gifted, Gurney was soon part of the Gloucester Cathedral choir.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19Scholarship after scholarship followed, culminating in a place
0:07:19 > 0:07:21at the Royal College of Music.
0:07:21 > 0:07:26Indeed, all of the music in this programme was composed by Ivor Gurney.
0:07:26 > 0:07:29It was here in London in 1913 that he suffered
0:07:29 > 0:07:34his first nervous breakdown, a portent of later mental health problems.
0:07:34 > 0:07:38Then in 1914, war broke out.
0:07:38 > 0:07:41Gurney immediately volunteered but was rejected
0:07:41 > 0:07:44because of his poor eyesight.
0:07:44 > 0:07:47Months later, with troop numbers falling catastrophically,
0:07:47 > 0:07:50the criteria were relaxed.
0:07:50 > 0:07:53In February 1915, Gurney was finally accepted
0:07:53 > 0:07:55into the Gloucesters.
0:07:55 > 0:07:58But he wasn't there on a patriotic mission
0:07:58 > 0:08:00to serve King, country and Empire.
0:08:00 > 0:08:03He wasn't there to have a "kick at the Kaiser".
0:08:03 > 0:08:06Gurney hoped that the physical exertions of soldiering
0:08:06 > 0:08:10together with the camaraderie and discipline of army life
0:08:10 > 0:08:13might alleviate his mental illness.
0:08:13 > 0:08:16Ivor Gurney had joined up as an experiment.
0:08:23 > 0:08:27In letters, he confesses to finding some of the route marches,
0:08:27 > 0:08:30square-bashing and button-polishing pointless,
0:08:30 > 0:08:34but adds that the comradeship, banter and the physical fatigue
0:08:34 > 0:08:36have brought huge mental benefits.
0:08:40 > 0:08:43The experiment, he claims initially, is a success.
0:08:43 > 0:08:49At the front, he was engaged in the deadly work of a signaller,
0:08:49 > 0:08:54crawling through deep mud into no-man's-land to repair field telephone wires,
0:08:54 > 0:08:58while artillery shells from both directions whined overhead.
0:08:58 > 0:09:01After one particular act of bravery,
0:09:01 > 0:09:05there was talk he might be recommended for a Distinguished Conduct Medal.
0:09:05 > 0:09:09Gurney was a charismatic original, by turns charming and opinionated.
0:09:09 > 0:09:11He could be awkward, shambolic,
0:09:11 > 0:09:14indifferent to clothing and personal appearance.
0:09:14 > 0:09:18Nevertheless, he attracted all manner of people to him,
0:09:18 > 0:09:21many of whom stayed loyal throughout his life.
0:09:22 > 0:09:24But the most important relationship,
0:09:24 > 0:09:27which inspired a decades-long correspondence
0:09:27 > 0:09:31was with the elegant, urbane Marion Scott.
0:09:31 > 0:09:3313 years older than Gurney,
0:09:33 > 0:09:38she had studied at the Royal College of Music before turning
0:09:38 > 0:09:40to writing and music criticism.
0:09:40 > 0:09:44On seeing Gurney for the first time at the Royal College,
0:09:44 > 0:09:48she wrote "What struck me was the latent force in him,
0:09:48 > 0:09:53"the fine head with its profusion of light brown hair - not too well brushed!
0:09:53 > 0:09:57"'This,' I said, to myself, 'must be the new composition scholar
0:09:57 > 0:09:59"'from Gloucester, whom they call Schubert.'"
0:10:01 > 0:10:04Ivor Gurney was a prolific letter writer
0:10:04 > 0:10:07and he wrote with extraordinary honesty.
0:10:07 > 0:10:12His correspondence paints a detailed picture of the day-to-day reality
0:10:12 > 0:10:15at the Front. These letters enable us to chart the physical,
0:10:15 > 0:10:18emotional and mental state of the man.
0:10:18 > 0:10:22Gurney's letters home in June 1916, just after going into the Line,
0:10:22 > 0:10:25are remarkably calm, even detached,
0:10:25 > 0:10:28not apprehensive or emotional.
0:10:28 > 0:10:31It's as though choice has been lifted from him
0:10:31 > 0:10:34and he now enjoys the calm of the fatalist.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38Army is catering for his daily needs
0:10:38 > 0:10:41and his whole life's destiny is in others' hands as well.
0:10:41 > 0:10:45And that seems to give him the freedom to enjoy the brotherhood
0:10:45 > 0:10:50of his fellow Gloucesters. He enjoys their stories, he enjoys their wit
0:10:50 > 0:10:52and their friendship. He loves their company,
0:10:52 > 0:10:56and he's full of admiration for their bravery.
0:10:56 > 0:10:59And like soldiers through the ages, he can face the dangers
0:10:59 > 0:11:02ahead of him because he's not facing them alone.
0:11:02 > 0:11:05He's facing them with his fellow men.
0:11:05 > 0:11:09Gurney is so detached at this point that he starts to enjoy
0:11:09 > 0:11:12the experience of being in the war.
0:11:12 > 0:11:14So he writes on the 7th June 1916,
0:11:14 > 0:11:19"War's damned interesting. It would be hard indeed
0:11:19 > 0:11:23"to be deprived of all this artist's material now."
0:11:26 > 0:11:30Gurney jokingly wrote to Scott asking for a piano,
0:11:30 > 0:11:33but his mind was also consumed with poetry.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37Writing was one way of getting through the war.
0:11:37 > 0:11:41Far from destroying Gurney, the war made him as a poet.
0:11:41 > 0:11:45He writes intensely about the commonplace.
0:11:45 > 0:11:48He chronicles the rations of the front-line soldier.
0:11:48 > 0:11:51He names the hills of Gloucester and the villages of France
0:11:51 > 0:11:54as though bringing them together in the same place.
0:11:54 > 0:11:59He sees the meandering Severn river in Gloucestershire
0:11:59 > 0:12:02mirrored in the River Somme, near where his battalion had been deployed,
0:12:02 > 0:12:07and continually he sends his poems back to England.
0:12:07 > 0:12:09Marion Scott responded with appreciative notes
0:12:09 > 0:12:12and suggested that with her literary connections,
0:12:12 > 0:12:17a first volume of poetry might just find a publisher.
0:12:17 > 0:12:19One of the myths of the soldier-poets
0:12:19 > 0:12:22is that war hurt them into poetry.
0:12:22 > 0:12:25In fact, Sassoon, Owen, Graves, Rosenberg,
0:12:25 > 0:12:28they were already writing before the war.
0:12:28 > 0:12:30The exception was Gurney,
0:12:30 > 0:12:34but of course he had the perfect poetic apprenticeship,
0:12:34 > 0:12:37setting other people's words to music, showing
0:12:37 > 0:12:42heightened attention to the nuances of language and rhyme and rhythm.
0:12:43 > 0:12:44Gurney's early poems,
0:12:44 > 0:12:47collected in his first volume Severn and Somme,
0:12:47 > 0:12:50were perfectly conventional and perfectly good.
0:12:50 > 0:12:52They knew their craft,
0:12:52 > 0:12:55and because the book didn't challenge any orthodoxies,
0:12:55 > 0:12:57it was received politely enough.
0:12:57 > 0:13:02What that book did demonstrate, even at this early stage
0:13:02 > 0:13:08in Gurney's writing career, was an intense attention to place.
0:13:08 > 0:13:14Surrounded by comrades who loved the same Gloucestershire landscapes
0:13:14 > 0:13:18that he loved, Gurney felt as nostalgic and homesick as ever,
0:13:18 > 0:13:23and he would write love poems to the localities which had nurtured him.
0:13:26 > 0:13:30The dead land oppressed me, I turned my thoughts away,
0:13:30 > 0:13:34And went where hill and meadow Are shadowless and gay.
0:13:34 > 0:13:38Where Cooper's stands by Cranham, Where the hill-gashes white
0:13:38 > 0:13:42Show golden in the sunshine, Our sunshine God's delight.
0:13:45 > 0:13:49Let my thoughts slide unwitting To other, dreadful trees,
0:13:49 > 0:13:55And found me standing, staring Sick of heart at these!
0:14:03 > 0:14:06Gurney was a poet who chronicled the details in landscapes,
0:14:06 > 0:14:10but he was also a man who needed to be on the move,
0:14:10 > 0:14:12whether it be a stroll through a Gloucestershire meadow
0:14:12 > 0:14:15or a route march at the Western Front.
0:14:15 > 0:14:18Eleanor Rawling has traced Ivor Gurney's footsteps.
0:14:18 > 0:14:22He's not the kind of poet who likes to stand
0:14:22 > 0:14:26as a passive observer and look at the landscape,
0:14:26 > 0:14:28and then write about it. Gurney likes to be in it,
0:14:28 > 0:14:34involved in it, immersed in it. You see the clues in his poetry
0:14:34 > 0:14:36because it's not just visual, he's not describing a scene.
0:14:36 > 0:14:39He's giving you the experience of being in it,
0:14:39 > 0:14:43so you get the sounds, the smells,
0:14:43 > 0:14:46the earth smell, the sight of the clouds,
0:14:46 > 0:14:50the leaves and the tree branches brushing past him.
0:14:50 > 0:14:53He needed to be immersed in it and moving through it.
0:15:00 > 0:15:03He realised very early on
0:15:03 > 0:15:07that he felt better when he was moving, so he walked.
0:15:07 > 0:15:10I think he ran as well, not as in running a marathon,
0:15:10 > 0:15:15but as in the joy of running down a hill or along a ridge or whatever.
0:15:15 > 0:15:19You can tell from his poetry how fast he's moving through the landscape,
0:15:19 > 0:15:22so he felt better.
0:15:22 > 0:15:28But secondly, I think he knew that this is what inspired his creativity.
0:15:28 > 0:15:31That sort of upsurge of joy you get.
0:15:31 > 0:15:36That was when he suddenly saw clearly what it was about,
0:15:36 > 0:15:41this place that really got through to him, and how he wanted to express it.
0:15:41 > 0:15:44Many of his poems are quite difficult to read.
0:15:44 > 0:15:46They've got strange rhythms.
0:15:46 > 0:15:50Almost more Gerard Manley Hopkins-like with his sprung rhythm.
0:15:50 > 0:15:53They bump about a bit from here to there,
0:15:53 > 0:15:57and more to me, they have in them a breathlessness.
0:15:57 > 0:16:00So there's one that I've got here in front of me, Old Thought,
0:16:00 > 0:16:02when he's up on the Cotswold edge.
0:16:02 > 0:16:05"Oh, up in height, Oh, snatched up
0:16:05 > 0:16:08"Oh, swiftly going." I think he's going up the hill
0:16:08 > 0:16:11- and he's pausing, going... - SHE GASPS
0:16:11 > 0:16:14..as he takes a breath, so the reader has to take a breath too.
0:16:14 > 0:16:17What he's doing, it's more what you might call
0:16:17 > 0:16:19stream of consciousness.
0:16:19 > 0:16:22He's actually pouring out what's happening to him.
0:16:27 > 0:16:29In Severn and Somme,
0:16:29 > 0:16:33Gurney switches between weathers, themes and even countries,
0:16:33 > 0:16:36experiencing everything around him viscerally.
0:16:39 > 0:16:42From a very young boy, Gurney revelled in the landscape
0:16:42 > 0:16:45of Gloucestershire and the River Severn.
0:16:45 > 0:16:48It was also a place where deep friendships began.
0:16:50 > 0:16:54As a young man, Gurney formed two particularly close bonds,
0:16:54 > 0:16:58with Herbert Howells and FW Harvey.
0:16:58 > 0:17:01Howells, two years younger, dapper and handsome,
0:17:01 > 0:17:06was destined to become one of the country's most celebrated composers
0:17:06 > 0:17:07of choral and sacred music.
0:17:07 > 0:17:11Will Harvey, who published poetry as FW Harvey,
0:17:11 > 0:17:15was slightly older and an absolute inspiration to Gurney.
0:17:15 > 0:17:18How they interacted has been pieced together by Anthony Boden,
0:17:18 > 0:17:22founder of the Ivor Gurney Society.
0:17:23 > 0:17:26They bought a little boat
0:17:26 > 0:17:28here at the lock
0:17:28 > 0:17:30and they called it the Dorothy,
0:17:30 > 0:17:32which was Gurney's youngest sister's name.
0:17:32 > 0:17:39They sailed it up and down in great joy.
0:17:39 > 0:17:44The other thing they did, of course, was to come to a point like this,
0:17:44 > 0:17:47and here we are looking out over the Severn,
0:17:47 > 0:17:49the May Hill in the distance,
0:17:49 > 0:17:53and being a tidal river, the flotsam and jetsam go up the river
0:17:53 > 0:17:56and later in the day, come down the river.
0:17:56 > 0:18:00They would bring their air rifles and take pot shots at it.
0:18:00 > 0:18:05In that way, they became very good shots.
0:18:05 > 0:18:08So that explains how it is Gurney's a crack shot, because I was always
0:18:08 > 0:18:12puzzled by the fact that here's someone who fails to get
0:18:12 > 0:18:14into the army in 1914 because of his poor eyesight,
0:18:14 > 0:18:18and yet who boasts in his poetry of being a top marksman.
0:18:18 > 0:18:21He probably needed his glasses on to do it.
0:18:21 > 0:18:26Maybe when he was rejected by the army,
0:18:26 > 0:18:30they wanted someone who'd got pretty good eyesight without spectacles.
0:18:30 > 0:18:34But of course, they were less fussy when they'd had so many men killed
0:18:34 > 0:18:40that they could afford to have people who were not exactly perfect in their vision.
0:18:40 > 0:18:45But, yes, he was a very, very good shot, except of course he hated
0:18:45 > 0:18:50the idea of killing another human being, and he did so.
0:18:50 > 0:18:52And in one of his less great poems -
0:18:52 > 0:18:55"I shot him, it had to be him or me."
0:18:55 > 0:19:01You can see that it's tearing him up that he's actually done this.
0:19:09 > 0:19:13The Battle of the Somme would last four and a half months.
0:19:13 > 0:19:15Friendships formed on the banks of the Severn
0:19:15 > 0:19:18would be shattered under fire.
0:19:18 > 0:19:21The Somme Offensive is raging
0:19:21 > 0:19:24and Gurney hears some desperate news.
0:19:24 > 0:19:27His closest friend - FW Harvey, Will Harvey -
0:19:27 > 0:19:29is missing, presumed dead.
0:19:29 > 0:19:34Gurney's response is to write an elegy which has become
0:19:34 > 0:19:38his best-known poem, To His Love, celebrating his friendship.
0:19:46 > 0:19:51He's gone, and all our plans Are useless indeed.
0:19:51 > 0:19:55We'll walk no more on Cotswolds
0:19:55 > 0:19:59Where the sheep feed Quietly and take no heed
0:19:59 > 0:20:02His body that was so quick Is not as you
0:20:02 > 0:20:04Knew it, on Severn River
0:20:04 > 0:20:07Under the blue Driving our small boat through
0:20:09 > 0:20:11You would not know him now...
0:20:13 > 0:20:16But still he died Nobly, so cover him over
0:20:16 > 0:20:20With violets of pride Purple from Severn side
0:20:20 > 0:20:21Cover him, cover him soon!
0:20:21 > 0:20:25And with thick-set Masses of memoried flowers -
0:20:25 > 0:20:30Hide that red wet Thing I must somehow forget.
0:20:33 > 0:20:36The remarkable thing about To His Love
0:20:36 > 0:20:38is that it starts as an orthodox pastoral elegy,
0:20:38 > 0:20:42hoping for the consolations of the natural world.
0:20:42 > 0:20:45But war's horrors have caused a rupture,
0:20:45 > 0:20:48and those desperate pleas - "Cover him, cover him soon,
0:20:48 > 0:20:51"Hide that red wet Thing" - admit the failure
0:20:51 > 0:20:56of a long poetic tradition to cope with the new circumstances
0:20:56 > 0:20:59of mass technological slaughter.
0:20:59 > 0:21:03The poem was a sign of things to come. Gurney's dissatisfaction
0:21:03 > 0:21:07with the old ways of expression and his desire to make
0:21:07 > 0:21:10a new language to convey the truth of war.
0:21:10 > 0:21:15In fact, Gurney was to discover that Harvey had miraculously survived.
0:21:15 > 0:21:18He was captured during a solo trench raid
0:21:18 > 0:21:21and spent the rest of the conflict in prisoner of war camps.
0:21:21 > 0:21:25Gurney was able to write to him, even sending songs that Harvey
0:21:25 > 0:21:28performed with his fellow POWs.
0:21:33 > 0:21:35One thing that Gurney constantly notes in his letters
0:21:35 > 0:21:38is the absurdity of war.
0:21:38 > 0:21:42"A whizz-bang missed me by inches while I was shaving," he reports.
0:21:42 > 0:21:49"And the impression it gave and gives me now is chiefly of the comic."
0:21:49 > 0:21:51Gurney never felt he was a real soldier.
0:21:51 > 0:21:53He called himself a dirty civilian.
0:21:53 > 0:21:56One thing Gurney did share with his fellow men
0:21:56 > 0:21:59was the sense that the Germans weren't the evil enemy.
0:21:59 > 0:22:05They were brothers. A mirror image betrayed by their elders.
0:22:05 > 0:22:08We know about the Christmas truce of 1914 and the famous
0:22:08 > 0:22:11football match on no-man's-land,
0:22:11 > 0:22:14but we also have to remember that the trenches were so close together
0:22:14 > 0:22:18that often the two sides could smell each other's cooking.
0:22:18 > 0:22:22They could hear each other's music. Gurney writes of one moment when
0:22:22 > 0:22:26the Germans were using their wind-up gramophone, and finally
0:22:26 > 0:22:30Gurney had had enough. He puts his head up over the trenches -
0:22:30 > 0:22:34quite a dangerous thing to do, I would have thought -
0:22:34 > 0:22:37and shouts, "We're sick of Schubert, give us Strauss!"
0:22:39 > 0:22:42Gurney's humour may have been just about holding up,
0:22:42 > 0:22:45but cracks were starting to appear.
0:22:45 > 0:22:47Gurney was no longer coping.
0:22:47 > 0:22:49The depression was coming back.
0:22:49 > 0:22:51He had never been the nattiest of dressers,
0:22:51 > 0:22:54but now he was a bit of a mess.
0:22:54 > 0:22:57When a young colonel came for the daily inspection
0:22:57 > 0:23:01and was asking questions - "Who is this man? Why is he in this state?" -
0:23:01 > 0:23:05Gurney's sergeant had to start making apologies.
0:23:05 > 0:23:09"He's a good man, quite a good man, sir, but he's a musician
0:23:09 > 0:23:13"and he doesn't seem able to keep himself clean."
0:23:27 > 0:23:33The winter of 1916-17 in France was the coldest in living memory.
0:23:33 > 0:23:38Sub-zero temperatures continued until the following March.
0:23:41 > 0:23:44Suddenly Gurney's experiment was unravelling.
0:23:44 > 0:23:47His mental state had started to suffer.
0:23:47 > 0:23:49A decision was made to remove him from the front line
0:23:49 > 0:23:51to the small town of Albert,
0:23:51 > 0:23:54where he was detailed to work on the water carts.
0:23:54 > 0:24:00Gurney was frustrated at not being up to the demands of the regular soldier.
0:24:00 > 0:24:04Albert was famous for a Basilica where a Virgin and Child
0:24:04 > 0:24:07hung perilously above the streets.
0:24:07 > 0:24:10Superstition had it that defeat was assured for the side
0:24:10 > 0:24:15who fired the shell that brought the statue crashing to the ground.
0:24:16 > 0:24:19I'm meeting with Dr Kate Kennedy
0:24:19 > 0:24:23who is writing a new biography of Ivor Gurney.
0:24:23 > 0:24:26Gurney records in his letters to Marion Scott
0:24:26 > 0:24:29that he's sitting around a little fire with his comrades
0:24:29 > 0:24:31having a cafe au lait,
0:24:31 > 0:24:33which for Gurney is the height of sophistication,
0:24:33 > 0:24:36and wondering at this church tower which was ruined,
0:24:36 > 0:24:39but would at one stage have been a glory,
0:24:39 > 0:24:42and amazed at the sight of a hanging statue,
0:24:42 > 0:24:45and of course here we have the hanging statue.
0:24:45 > 0:24:49- It would have been dangling past the horizontal at that point?- Yes.
0:24:49 > 0:24:53This place was absolutely packed with troops heading towards the Somme.
0:24:53 > 0:24:56They saw this extraordinary statue, and as they passed under it,
0:24:56 > 0:24:59they thought, depending on their frame of mind,
0:24:59 > 0:25:03the Virgin Mary is suicidal, flinging the Christ child down
0:25:03 > 0:25:07to be destroyed along with us, another human sacrifice,
0:25:07 > 0:25:10or she's redeeming Christ. She's helping to save us.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14She's pulling Him towards herself. So all sorts of mythology
0:25:14 > 0:25:16and superstition built up around this statue.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19So what does Gurney think when she looks up?
0:25:19 > 0:25:23When Gurney sees it, he's amazed by it, as he writes.
0:25:23 > 0:25:26About 13 days later, as he's still around this area,
0:25:26 > 0:25:31he writes a little impromptu in a letter home, called The Mother.
0:25:31 > 0:25:35He writes, it begins, "We scar the earth with dreadful enginery,
0:25:35 > 0:25:39"She takes us to her bosom at the last, hiding our hate
0:25:39 > 0:25:43"with love, who cannot see of any child the faults.
0:25:43 > 0:25:46"We'll wait there till our passion is passed."
0:25:46 > 0:25:51So he is building on this idea of the mother bringing
0:25:51 > 0:25:54in her children to her protection, to her arms.
0:25:54 > 0:25:56It's a terrible, terrible time for Gurney,
0:25:56 > 0:26:00the Somme is at its worst. The absolute worst of the Western Front.
0:26:00 > 0:26:04The trenches are bitterly cold, mud everywhere,
0:26:04 > 0:26:07he himself is ill. He's depressed, he's really struggling,
0:26:07 > 0:26:11but at this crucial moment where it looks like he's about to break down entirely,
0:26:11 > 0:26:15and that could have been the end of the war and of sanity for him,
0:26:15 > 0:26:19he meets these wonderful Scottish soldiers, and he recounts
0:26:19 > 0:26:22how they sing folk songs together.
0:26:22 > 0:26:25He's endlessly quoting Robert Burns to them,
0:26:25 > 0:26:27and one hopes they are enjoying it!
0:26:27 > 0:26:31He spends Hogmanay with them, with a piper in the next village.
0:26:31 > 0:26:35They give him their combined funds to go and forage
0:26:35 > 0:26:38in Albert and whatever shops were left around here,
0:26:38 > 0:26:40to go and get Christmas Day provisions.
0:26:40 > 0:26:43I'd have thought it was quite dangerous giving your money to Gurney to buy food.
0:26:43 > 0:26:45I wouldn't have trusted him myself!
0:26:45 > 0:26:49Incredible that you can have fun right in the middle of the depths
0:26:49 > 0:26:51of winter in the centre of the Somme. He writes
0:26:51 > 0:26:56his poem Scots, as a kind of memorial, which has wonderful
0:26:56 > 0:26:58folk song overtones to it. It has the refrain,
0:26:58 > 0:27:01"Over the top this morning, at the cold light of day,
0:27:01 > 0:27:03"the dawn's first grey" sort of thing,
0:27:03 > 0:27:06which has just these little echoes of folk song,
0:27:06 > 0:27:08echoes of Ye Banks and Braes,
0:27:08 > 0:27:12so it's a kind of tribute to these comrades he's invested so much in
0:27:12 > 0:27:14and has then lost.
0:27:16 > 0:27:20But it wasn't only poetry which Gurney was writing at this time.
0:27:22 > 0:27:27Despite the lack of a piano, his head was also full of new songs.
0:27:29 > 0:27:34# This is a sacred city
0:27:34 > 0:27:41# Built of marvellous earth
0:27:41 > 0:27:48# Life was lived nobly there
0:27:48 > 0:27:55# To give such beauty birth. #
0:27:55 > 0:28:00Gurney composes By A Bierside while leaning, he tells us,
0:28:00 > 0:28:04against some sandbags in a disused trench mortar emplacement.
0:28:04 > 0:28:06It's an astonishing achievement,
0:28:06 > 0:28:09particularly given the circumstances,
0:28:09 > 0:28:12surrounded as he is by the chaos and the noise
0:28:12 > 0:28:16and the danger and busyness of war.
0:28:16 > 0:28:20But in fact it's the first of five songs which Gurney
0:28:20 > 0:28:22composes at the front-line.
0:28:22 > 0:28:26Four of which are still considered today to be masterpieces.
0:28:26 > 0:28:29Their themes, as we might expect,
0:28:29 > 0:28:33are death, and the search for, or grief, at the loss of
0:28:33 > 0:28:39the peace and the security and the loved landscapes of home.
0:28:43 > 0:28:47By March 1917, with sub-zero temperatures persisting,
0:28:47 > 0:28:51the Germans begin a strategic retreat to the Hindenburg line.
0:28:51 > 0:28:55They mine roads, cut down fruit trees and poison wells
0:28:55 > 0:28:57and water supplies.
0:28:57 > 0:29:01This wanton violation of the countryside
0:29:01 > 0:29:04enrages the advancing Allied troops.
0:29:04 > 0:29:07The 2nd/5th Gloucesters are part of the campaign pursuing
0:29:07 > 0:29:09the Germans through Picardy.
0:29:09 > 0:29:12One night they came upon the village of Caulaincourt.
0:29:13 > 0:29:17Caulaincourt was levelled. There was only one building still standing.
0:29:17 > 0:29:20And it was this one, the mausoleum.
0:29:20 > 0:29:22Rumour has it this building only survived
0:29:22 > 0:29:27because a local landowner had bribed the Germans to keep it intact.
0:29:27 > 0:29:31It's not surprising, at the end of a freezing winter,
0:29:31 > 0:29:33the Gloucesters should have come here for shelter,
0:29:33 > 0:29:37and Gurney writes about this in a celebratory fashion.
0:29:37 > 0:29:41There were mouth organs, there were tin whistles,
0:29:41 > 0:29:45and everyone had a raucous time among the dead.
0:29:45 > 0:29:48What they didn't know was that the Germans had booby-trapped
0:29:48 > 0:29:52the building, and fortunately, for whatever reason,
0:29:52 > 0:29:54the bombs didn't explode.
0:30:00 > 0:30:03The battalion was closing in on the retreating Germans.
0:30:03 > 0:30:07They had captured a machine gun and taken seven prisoners.
0:30:07 > 0:30:10A series of night patrols had discovered a copse
0:30:10 > 0:30:13occupied by another German machine gun crew.
0:30:13 > 0:30:16Gurney was set to be part of the next attack.
0:30:17 > 0:30:22What happened on the outskirts of Vermand on Good Friday 1917
0:30:22 > 0:30:26was to provide one of the defining moments of Gurney's life.
0:30:26 > 0:30:30Years later, while incarcerated in the asylum,
0:30:30 > 0:30:35he would relive its intensity, in great poem after great poem.
0:30:35 > 0:30:39We're in a field, in the middle of nowhere.
0:30:39 > 0:30:42Vermand is over there, about a mile away.
0:30:42 > 0:30:46It would have been somewhere like this where Gurney
0:30:46 > 0:30:49and the Gloucesters crossed land to attack the Germans.
0:30:49 > 0:30:52That's right. They'd been chasing the Germans back
0:30:52 > 0:30:55to the Hindenburg Line for the last few weeks.
0:30:55 > 0:30:58This was around Easter of 1917.
0:30:58 > 0:31:03They'd attacked them in various villages all the way up to here.
0:31:03 > 0:31:08They'd surprised them shaving and having their breakfast in the village just down the road,
0:31:08 > 0:31:13and now on Good Friday, they realised the moment had come.
0:31:13 > 0:31:17They were in trenches probably somewhere very close to here.
0:31:17 > 0:31:20For 40 minutes, the Gloucesters pounded the German lines,
0:31:20 > 0:31:23trying to break the barbed wire.
0:31:23 > 0:31:26When Gurney heard the whistle, over they went,
0:31:26 > 0:31:31and he stumbled through this ploughed field in the pouring rain,
0:31:31 > 0:31:36friendly fire hitting him from behind, Germans bombarding him
0:31:36 > 0:31:40from the front, but what they found as they got across, the ones lucky enough to get that far,
0:31:40 > 0:31:43was that the German wire was entirely intact.
0:31:45 > 0:31:51The event was to be the catalyst for a poem we saw earlier in manuscript.
0:31:51 > 0:31:56It's power and unflinching honesty mark Gurney out as one of the finest soldier-poets.
0:31:56 > 0:31:58The silent one
0:31:58 > 0:32:03Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two -
0:32:03 > 0:32:07Who for his hours of life had chattered through
0:32:07 > 0:32:10Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent
0:32:10 > 0:32:16Yet faced unbroken wires, stepped over, and went
0:32:16 > 0:32:23A noble fool, faithful to his stripes - and ended
0:32:25 > 0:32:29But I - weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance
0:32:29 > 0:32:34Of line - to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken
0:32:34 > 0:32:36Wires, and saw the flashes and kept unshaken,
0:32:40 > 0:32:46Till the politest voice - a finicking accent, said,
0:32:46 > 0:32:50"Do you think you might crawl through there? There's a hole."
0:32:50 > 0:32:57In the afraid darkness, shot at, I smiled, as politely replied -
0:32:57 > 0:33:02"I'm afraid not, Sir." There was no hole, no way to be seen,
0:33:02 > 0:33:08Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes
0:33:08 > 0:33:15Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing -
0:33:15 > 0:33:23And swore deep heart's deep oaths Polite to God
0:33:23 > 0:33:28And retreated and came on again, again retreated -
0:33:28 > 0:33:33And a second time faced the screen.
0:33:46 > 0:33:48At some point between lying under this wire,
0:33:48 > 0:33:50refusing to go any further,
0:33:50 > 0:33:55and being forced across no-man's-land, Gurney stumbles and
0:33:55 > 0:33:59falls and as he reaches his arm out, he is shot
0:33:59 > 0:34:02about here just below the shoulder, through a bicep,
0:34:02 > 0:34:05and he's very lucky, it avoids his torso.
0:34:05 > 0:34:07The bullet goes clean through his arm.
0:34:07 > 0:34:11- Unfortunately, it's not quite bad enough to send him back to England. - No.
0:34:11 > 0:34:14This was Good Friday 1917.
0:34:14 > 0:34:18It may have been only a flesh wound but it briefly took Gurney away
0:34:18 > 0:34:23from the front line and thankfully wasn't the end of his career as a pianist, either.
0:34:23 > 0:34:26Three days later, on Easter Monday,
0:34:26 > 0:34:28the poet Edward Thomas was not so lucky.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31He was killed by a shell near Arras.
0:34:31 > 0:34:36Gurney later would set over a dozen of Thomas's poems to music.
0:34:36 > 0:34:39Gurney was moved to a military hospital in Rouen,
0:34:39 > 0:34:42where he spent six weeks writing letters
0:34:42 > 0:34:46and fantasised about living in a stone Cotswold cottage.
0:34:46 > 0:34:49After his recovery, he rejoins the 2nd/5th
0:34:49 > 0:34:52who by now are engaged in action at Arras,
0:34:52 > 0:34:55and he retrains as a machine-gunner.
0:34:55 > 0:34:57The regiment then moves on to Ypres
0:34:57 > 0:35:00where the Battle of Passchendaele is at its height.
0:35:02 > 0:35:07Where there was once carnage is now high-grade agricultural land.
0:35:10 > 0:35:13Piet Chielens is taking me to the spot where Gurney,
0:35:13 > 0:35:17as a machine-gunner, sat at a distance watching his comrades go over the top.
0:35:20 > 0:35:26Many of the guys he was with from 1915 onwards,
0:35:26 > 0:35:28during training in England,
0:35:28 > 0:35:30are in that attack,
0:35:30 > 0:35:32and don't come back.
0:35:32 > 0:35:37It is one of those moments
0:35:37 > 0:35:41which he will reflect upon for the rest of his life.
0:35:41 > 0:35:45How do you think the Gloucesters felt about him opting out,
0:35:45 > 0:35:48as they might have seen it, becoming a machine-gunner?
0:35:48 > 0:35:52Yes, especially the camaraderie in the regiment, and especially
0:35:52 > 0:35:59in a territorial regiment, is very, very important amongst the ranks.
0:35:59 > 0:36:04And so he refers to his corporal, Don Hancox,
0:36:04 > 0:36:09who is blaming him for changing jobs.
0:36:09 > 0:36:15Because although he's still following the infantry battalion,
0:36:15 > 0:36:22he is no longer at that point part of the 2nd/5th Gloucester Regiment.
0:36:22 > 0:36:29That hurts them. They feel left behind by him.
0:36:29 > 0:36:32It's like he has deserted them.
0:36:32 > 0:36:35Don Hancox is one of Gurney's closest friends, isn't he?
0:36:35 > 0:36:38- And he's killed in the valley here. - Yes, he is killed.
0:36:38 > 0:36:42Gurney is at the time itself not sure.
0:36:42 > 0:36:45He knows he's taken out of battle.
0:36:45 > 0:36:47In one of the poems, he refers to
0:36:47 > 0:36:51"whether Gloucester's buried Gloucester, I know not."
0:36:51 > 0:36:56He doesn't know, maybe not until
0:36:56 > 0:37:00he's back home, back in Gloucester, that he learns about his fate.
0:37:00 > 0:37:06But he knows that he was hit during the battle of the 22nd August.
0:37:06 > 0:37:10We know now that he's buried at Lijssenthoek Cemetery,
0:37:10 > 0:37:15and that he died in the CCS - the casualty clearing station,
0:37:15 > 0:37:16the following day.
0:37:20 > 0:37:2818B - Lee, Ormsten, Havelin...
0:37:28 > 0:37:32Turner,
0:37:32 > 0:37:36Townsend,
0:37:36 > 0:37:38Wilson,
0:37:38 > 0:37:41Nash, aged 21...
0:37:46 > 0:37:48Hancox.
0:37:49 > 0:37:54So here lies Gurney's greatest friend during the war.
0:37:54 > 0:37:5920338, Corporal LD Hancox,
0:37:59 > 0:38:03Gloucestershire Regiment, 23rd August, 1917.
0:38:03 > 0:38:05Rest in peace.
0:38:05 > 0:38:10Gurney writes obsessively about Hancox in later years,
0:38:10 > 0:38:14years later in the asylum, poem after poem about Hancox.
0:38:14 > 0:38:18He admires Hancox for his bravery,
0:38:18 > 0:38:22for his Gloucester goodness, as Gurney puts it,
0:38:22 > 0:38:26simply for liking Gurney's poetry, even, so there was
0:38:26 > 0:38:30a mutual admiration between the two men.
0:38:30 > 0:38:36I think it might be appropriate just to...
0:38:38 > 0:38:40..read this.
0:38:40 > 0:38:45"Don Hancox, shall I no more see your face frore,
0:38:45 > 0:38:50"Gloucester-good in the first light But you are dead!
0:38:50 > 0:38:54"No more to march happy with such good comrades,
0:38:54 > 0:38:58"Watching the sky, the brown land, the bayonet blades
0:38:58 > 0:39:02"Moving - to muse on music forgetting the pack."
0:39:05 > 0:39:08One of the unique characteristics about Gurney's poetry,
0:39:08 > 0:39:12certainly if you compare him to Sassoon or to Owen,
0:39:12 > 0:39:15is that he names these people whom he lives with,
0:39:15 > 0:39:18whom he fights with, whom he jokes with.
0:39:18 > 0:39:21He names them so we can come and find their graves.
0:39:21 > 0:39:26We know about Don Hancox because Gurney tell us about him
0:39:26 > 0:39:28in poem after poem.
0:39:28 > 0:39:31The poetry itself, as Gurney wanted,
0:39:31 > 0:39:37becomes a memorial for those who lived and died alongside Gurney.
0:39:42 > 0:39:46During the Battle of Passchendaele, Gurney was part of a planned attack
0:39:46 > 0:39:48on a German fortress.
0:39:48 > 0:39:51The Germans had been using mustard gas for two years.
0:39:51 > 0:39:55As a weapon of terror, it is designed to immobilise large numbers
0:39:55 > 0:39:59without necessarily killing them.
0:39:59 > 0:40:02Gurney, like others in his machine gun crew,
0:40:02 > 0:40:06was working his away along a trench carrying heavy gun parts.
0:40:06 > 0:40:10Such was the physical effort involved that wearing a gas mask
0:40:10 > 0:40:13was out of the question.
0:40:13 > 0:40:16A previous barrage of mustard gas lay dormant in puddles.
0:40:16 > 0:40:21The entire crew of eight were subjected to its noxious fumes
0:40:21 > 0:40:24and without firing a shot, were out of the battle.
0:40:26 > 0:40:29Mystery surrounds how badly gassed Gurney was,
0:40:29 > 0:40:32but it got him a Blighty, a ticket home.
0:40:32 > 0:40:35Certainly his experiment had failed.
0:40:35 > 0:40:3915 months of Army life had left him in a fragile mental state.
0:40:39 > 0:40:42He may have thought he'd pulled a fast one.
0:40:42 > 0:40:45Nothing was further from the truth.
0:40:45 > 0:40:48The effects of mustard gas can last a lifetime.
0:40:53 > 0:40:57So Gurney, one way or another, had finally got his Blighty wound.
0:40:57 > 0:41:01He was coming home and he himself had chosen
0:41:01 > 0:41:03to be sent to Bangour in Scotland.
0:41:03 > 0:41:06His reasoning being that it was too far away
0:41:06 > 0:41:10for his family to visit. But there were other reasons
0:41:10 > 0:41:11why this was an excellent decision.
0:41:11 > 0:41:15Bangour was a progressive military hospital.
0:41:15 > 0:41:19It had its own self-sufficient farm, which provided fresh meat and veg.
0:41:19 > 0:41:22It had a series of concert parties.
0:41:22 > 0:41:26The culture of Bangour was excellent for Gurney, it was his ideal place.
0:41:26 > 0:41:32Bangour believed in treating the whole body and mind together.
0:41:32 > 0:41:37Ivor Bertie Gurney could not have been more fortunate.
0:41:41 > 0:41:44The fresh white sheets and peace of Bangour
0:41:44 > 0:41:46soon worked their magic on Gurney.
0:41:46 > 0:41:49Away from the hellish sound of war, he thrived.
0:41:49 > 0:41:51He had more time to write
0:41:51 > 0:41:55and then promptly fell for a pretty volunteer nurse.
0:41:56 > 0:42:00Annie Nelson Drummond was the only daughter of an industrious
0:42:00 > 0:42:02Scottish family of four sons.
0:42:02 > 0:42:06A girl amongst boys, Annie possessed a native intelligence.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10She was an enterprising and highly capable woman.
0:42:10 > 0:42:14She had never met anyone quite like Ivor Gurney, musician and poet.
0:42:14 > 0:42:16They talked incessantly.
0:42:16 > 0:42:19He introduced her to literature and music.
0:42:19 > 0:42:22Their affection, it seems, was equally matched.
0:42:22 > 0:42:26He wrote to his friend Herbert Howells,
0:42:26 > 0:42:29"I forgot my body when walking with her".
0:42:29 > 0:42:31Ivor Gurney had found love.
0:42:33 > 0:42:39Six weeks later, Gurney was discharged and sent to a camp in Northumberland.
0:42:39 > 0:42:42During that time, Annie, the lovely but practical Scot,
0:42:42 > 0:42:47realised that as engaging as Ivor was, he was unstable.
0:42:47 > 0:42:50In short, he wasn't husband material.
0:42:50 > 0:42:55When the Dear John letter came, Gurney was devastated.
0:43:01 > 0:43:04His mental state deteriorated rapidly.
0:43:04 > 0:43:09He sent goodbye letters to friends, threatening suicide.
0:43:09 > 0:43:12He intended to drown himself in a canal but lost courage
0:43:12 > 0:43:16and was found sitting on the bank in despair.
0:43:16 > 0:43:20In September 1918, two months before the Armistice,
0:43:20 > 0:43:24Gurney was discharged from the Army as unfit for service.
0:43:24 > 0:43:26He took a series of jobs,
0:43:26 > 0:43:29and while there were certainly bumps along the way,
0:43:29 > 0:43:31by the following month his spirits had started to lift.
0:43:31 > 0:43:34He received royalties for Severn and Somme
0:43:34 > 0:43:36and learned that a second edition was planned.
0:43:36 > 0:43:41At last, Gurney started to feel he was getting the recognition he deserved.
0:43:42 > 0:43:46War's Embers, a second volume of his poetry written mostly during the war
0:43:46 > 0:43:50was published, and Gurney returned to London
0:43:50 > 0:43:52to pursue his first love - music.
0:43:52 > 0:43:57Gurney came back to the Royal College of Music as a war veteran in 1919.
0:43:57 > 0:44:01This time, his tutor was the finest composer of his generation,
0:44:01 > 0:44:03Ralph Vaughan Williams.
0:44:03 > 0:44:06This was a time of huge success for Gurney.
0:44:06 > 0:44:09He was being published, he was being performed,
0:44:09 > 0:44:12he was moving in high artistic circles.
0:44:12 > 0:44:14And he was productive.
0:44:14 > 0:44:1960 songs in 1920 alone and dozens of poems.
0:44:20 > 0:44:23But inwardly, things were starting to go wrong.
0:44:23 > 0:44:27More wrong than previously, Gurney acknowledged.
0:44:27 > 0:44:32He could no longer cater for his hygiene or his basic dietary needs.
0:44:32 > 0:44:37He failed his exams at the Royal College. His scholarship ran out.
0:44:37 > 0:44:40And he took off across the countryside on long walks.
0:44:40 > 0:44:44Hoping that that old cure would fix him again.
0:44:44 > 0:44:46He moved from job to job,
0:44:46 > 0:44:49all the while his head was full of songs and poems.
0:44:49 > 0:44:53What wonders he would achieve, he told Marion Scott,
0:44:53 > 0:44:55if only he were well.
0:44:55 > 0:44:59MOURNFUL MUSIC
0:45:00 > 0:45:03Gurney had exhausted his options.
0:45:03 > 0:45:05He had tried living with his brother.
0:45:05 > 0:45:07He had even followed his wartime fantasy
0:45:07 > 0:45:09by installing himself in
0:45:09 > 0:45:13a derelict, stone Cotswold cottage and trying to live off the land.
0:45:13 > 0:45:16None of these attempts at normality stood a chance.
0:45:18 > 0:45:20In September 1922,
0:45:20 > 0:45:22Ivor Gurney was declared insane
0:45:22 > 0:45:24and committed to Barnwood House,
0:45:24 > 0:45:27an asylum on the outskirts of Gloucester.
0:45:27 > 0:45:31In December, after several successful escape attempts,
0:45:31 > 0:45:35he became a private patient at the City of London Mental Hospital
0:45:35 > 0:45:37in Dartford, Kent.
0:45:37 > 0:45:41Though well intended, this decision, taken by his London friends,
0:45:41 > 0:45:44tore him away of his beloved Gloucestershire
0:45:44 > 0:45:46and, in the process, broke his spirit.
0:45:48 > 0:45:51The irony being that Gurney's war experiences
0:45:51 > 0:45:55had all but rid him of the anxieties, the mood swings
0:45:55 > 0:45:58and the visions which had plagued him previously.
0:45:58 > 0:46:02Now that he was safe again, the old troubles started to resurface.
0:46:04 > 0:46:07"After the war, what hopes there were,"
0:46:07 > 0:46:09Gurney wrote to Marion Scott from the asylum,
0:46:09 > 0:46:13"to earn a living and to write praise of England."
0:46:13 > 0:46:17This first war poet, as he now began to consider himself,
0:46:17 > 0:46:22was bewildered at the reasons given for his confinement, complaining,
0:46:22 > 0:46:24"All England should be honouring me."
0:46:27 > 0:46:31Edgar Jones is a Professor in the History of Military Psychiatry
0:46:31 > 0:46:33at the Maudsley Hospital in London,
0:46:33 > 0:46:36who has studied Ivor Gurney's medical records.
0:46:37 > 0:46:41The Maudsley was founded in 1915 as a war hospital,
0:46:41 > 0:46:43and it remains a leading centre for research into
0:46:43 > 0:46:45the effects of shell-shock and gas.
0:46:47 > 0:46:50He himself seems unsure as to the real reason,
0:46:50 > 0:46:52as he puts it, why he gets... sent home to Blighty.
0:46:52 > 0:46:54Obviously he inhales gas,
0:46:54 > 0:46:57but at the same time he says, you know, he spends five days
0:46:57 > 0:47:00at Third Ypres shaking with the shaking of the guns,
0:47:00 > 0:47:05that sounds to me like a kind of early shell-shock.
0:47:05 > 0:47:08Yes, Gurney is in a front-line infantry battalion.
0:47:08 > 0:47:12He's been a signaller. He's attached to a machine-gun unit.
0:47:12 > 0:47:15So he's really been through a very stressful period.
0:47:15 > 0:47:18He's been in the front line for nearly a year and a half
0:47:18 > 0:47:21and that would stress the nerves of any man
0:47:21 > 0:47:25because he would have been subjected regularly to artillery bombardments,
0:47:25 > 0:47:27and that's one of the most difficult things to deal with
0:47:27 > 0:47:30because there's nothing you can do to protect your life.
0:47:30 > 0:47:31Is it possible that actually
0:47:31 > 0:47:34his creativity helps him in those conditions?
0:47:34 > 0:47:36There's one poem where he talks about
0:47:36 > 0:47:38thinking about music while under bombardment,
0:47:38 > 0:47:43and clearly at other times he's even writing poetry under bombardment.
0:47:43 > 0:47:48Presumably that's one way of moving yourself out of the situation?
0:47:48 > 0:47:51It may also be a way of trying to understand it
0:47:51 > 0:47:54and coming to terms with it
0:47:54 > 0:47:57because it's a very difficult thing to accommodate.
0:47:57 > 0:48:00You know, why am I there? Why am I putting up with this?
0:48:00 > 0:48:02I'm seeing my friends killed and wounded
0:48:02 > 0:48:04and I can see no obvious gain.
0:48:04 > 0:48:08If you can then think of some way of conceptualising that,
0:48:08 > 0:48:09or making it bearable...
0:48:09 > 0:48:12And he draws comparisons with the Gloucester countryside
0:48:12 > 0:48:14and what he's having to go through in these trenches.
0:48:14 > 0:48:18So it could be a coping mechanism.
0:48:21 > 0:48:24Gurney has been reduced to a pitiful state.
0:48:24 > 0:48:28He has psychotic episodes and grandiose delusions.
0:48:29 > 0:48:34But his creativity is unbridled - he's still writing poems and songs.
0:48:37 > 0:48:42During these years, Gurney's poetry takes an experimental turn,
0:48:42 > 0:48:44inventing original grammars and rhythms
0:48:44 > 0:48:46to convey the extremities of battle terror.
0:48:56 > 0:48:59Reliving his experiences at Passchendaele,
0:48:59 > 0:49:02he crafts this description of fatigue and illness -
0:49:02 > 0:49:06"Half dead with sheer tiredness,
0:49:06 > 0:49:08"wakened quick at night
0:49:08 > 0:49:09"With dysentery pangs..."
0:49:15 > 0:49:17At the limits of endurance,
0:49:17 > 0:49:20poetry becomes a unique witness.
0:49:20 > 0:49:22It's believed that Gurney was bipolar
0:49:22 > 0:49:26but Edgar Jones thinks the diagnosis could lie in another direction.
0:49:28 > 0:49:30The doctors at the time described him
0:49:30 > 0:49:32as suffering from delusional insanity,
0:49:32 > 0:49:33which doesn't help us very much.
0:49:33 > 0:49:38But what is clear is that his mental state is fairly static
0:49:38 > 0:49:41over the 15 years that he was at Dartford,
0:49:41 > 0:49:44and it's characterised by persecutory delusions.
0:49:44 > 0:49:47He has the idea that someone is transmitting
0:49:47 > 0:49:49electricity or wireless waves
0:49:49 > 0:49:52to control him and torture him,
0:49:52 > 0:49:56to the extent that he tries to seal up the windows of his ward.
0:49:56 > 0:49:59He also believes that there is a machine under the floorboard
0:49:59 > 0:50:04transmitting, again, wireless electricity into his body and mind.
0:50:04 > 0:50:06And he asks the medical superintendent
0:50:06 > 0:50:09to dig up the floorboards and take the machine away.
0:50:09 > 0:50:10And those sort of
0:50:10 > 0:50:14persecutory delusions and auditory hallucinations
0:50:14 > 0:50:16are more characteristic of schizophrenia
0:50:16 > 0:50:19than bipolar affective disorder.
0:50:19 > 0:50:21The doctors also identified periods where
0:50:21 > 0:50:23he's regarded as incomprehensible.
0:50:23 > 0:50:25They can't follow what he's saying.
0:50:25 > 0:50:28His speech has a bizarre characteristic.
0:50:28 > 0:50:31And again, that is more typical of schizophrenia,
0:50:31 > 0:50:34of what would later be called formal thought disorder.
0:50:34 > 0:50:38MUSIC: "Sleep" by Ivor Gurney and John Fletcher
0:50:41 > 0:50:43# Come,
0:50:43 > 0:50:46# Sleep
0:50:46 > 0:50:53# And with thy sweet deceiving
0:50:54 > 0:51:04# Lock me in delight awhile
0:51:07 > 0:51:12# Let some pleasing dream beguile
0:51:12 > 0:51:19# All my fancies... #
0:51:19 > 0:51:24The Thiepval Memorial at the Somme, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens,
0:51:24 > 0:51:28lists the names of over 72,000 men, whose bodies were never found.
0:51:30 > 0:51:34Gurney himself came very close to death, several times,
0:51:34 > 0:51:36but of course he survived.
0:51:36 > 0:51:39After the war, when he was feeling suicidal,
0:51:39 > 0:51:43he begged to be allowed to die, to commit suicide.
0:51:43 > 0:51:46And he came to regret deeply
0:51:46 > 0:51:51the fact that a bullet had not finished him off in the war.
0:51:58 > 0:52:01Honour is the theme that comes up more than any other
0:52:01 > 0:52:04in Gurney's writings during this period,
0:52:04 > 0:52:08because it summarises his sense of abandonment
0:52:08 > 0:52:10by country, by friends and by family.
0:52:10 > 0:52:12His letters at this time
0:52:12 > 0:52:15are the most desperate documents I've ever read.
0:52:15 > 0:52:17They're worse than suicide notes.
0:52:17 > 0:52:21They're harrowing appeals, begging to be allowed the release,
0:52:21 > 0:52:25the freedom, to kill himself and end the pain.
0:52:28 > 0:52:31Incarcerated at the Dartford asylum,
0:52:31 > 0:52:36Gurney - the irrepressible walker - refuses to take exercise outside.
0:52:36 > 0:52:39"This is not country," he cries.
0:52:39 > 0:52:42One day, the widow of the poet Edward Thomas visits him
0:52:42 > 0:52:44and is shocked at his condition.
0:52:44 > 0:52:45She returns a few days later
0:52:45 > 0:52:49with an Ordnance Survey map of Gloucestershire.
0:52:49 > 0:52:51Together, with the map laid out on the bed,
0:52:51 > 0:52:54they trace the outlines of his old haunts.
0:52:56 > 0:53:00Gurney's spirits lift as he recalls individual paths, trees,
0:53:00 > 0:53:02stiles and streams.
0:53:02 > 0:53:05He can visualise his youthful wanderings
0:53:05 > 0:53:07by the symbols on the map.
0:53:07 > 0:53:11PIANO PLAYS
0:53:24 > 0:53:27During the war he was writing quite well-behaved,
0:53:27 > 0:53:30conventional, orthodox poetry.
0:53:30 > 0:53:32And it didn't break any rules
0:53:32 > 0:53:34but it was praised, it was popular.
0:53:34 > 0:53:37He had no problems getting it published.
0:53:37 > 0:53:42After the war, especially in the on-rush of the asylum years,
0:53:42 > 0:53:46he was writing in the white heat of inspiration.
0:53:46 > 0:53:51In one month alone, we think he wrote four books of poetry
0:53:51 > 0:53:54and, at that point, he could no longer get published.
0:53:54 > 0:53:58The work was idiosyncratic, it broke all the rules of grammar,
0:53:58 > 0:54:02it was shoddily presented, in many respects,
0:54:02 > 0:54:05but it had the hallmarks of genius.
0:54:05 > 0:54:07Gurney would send it out to publishers
0:54:07 > 0:54:09and it would be rejected.
0:54:09 > 0:54:11It just added to that sense that he had -
0:54:11 > 0:54:15lost in the asylum in a county on the other side of the country
0:54:15 > 0:54:17from his beloved Gloucestershire -
0:54:17 > 0:54:20that he had been forgotten, abandoned,
0:54:20 > 0:54:24that the honour that was due to him by the country
0:54:24 > 0:54:27was never going to be forthcoming.
0:54:27 > 0:54:30CRIES OF WADING BIRDS
0:54:32 > 0:54:35At Dartford, Gurney writes in order to resist.
0:54:40 > 0:54:42..he warns defiantly.
0:54:42 > 0:54:43Immersed in poems,
0:54:43 > 0:54:46he can escape to the happier times which the war represented,
0:54:46 > 0:54:50and used that war service to upbraid the present
0:54:50 > 0:54:52for its appalling betrayal.
0:54:52 > 0:54:56Gurney proclaims himself as the sole honest man,
0:54:56 > 0:55:00a teller of truth and "war poet whose right of honour",
0:55:00 > 0:55:03he boasts, "cuts falsehood like a knife."
0:55:06 > 0:55:10Marion Scott, ever his most loyal friend,
0:55:10 > 0:55:14pays most of the medical bills, constantly visiting him,
0:55:14 > 0:55:16taking him out on day trips.
0:55:16 > 0:55:20She documents his work and photographs him.
0:55:20 > 0:55:23In what is believed to the last picture of Gurney,
0:55:23 > 0:55:26he stands on the beach at Dover looking across to France,
0:55:26 > 0:55:29as though he is trying to make sense of it all.
0:55:31 > 0:55:35Then everything shuts down, the poetry and the music stop.
0:55:38 > 0:55:43Almost a decade later, on the 27th December, 1937,
0:55:43 > 0:55:45the City of London Mental Hospital
0:55:45 > 0:55:50informed the coroner that Ivor Bertie Gurney had died there.
0:55:50 > 0:55:51He was aged 47.
0:55:57 > 0:56:00PIANO PLAYS
0:56:05 > 0:56:08And that might have been that.
0:56:08 > 0:56:11But Marion Scott and the composer Gerald Finzi preserved his papers,
0:56:11 > 0:56:16recognising that they possessed some special quality of genius.
0:56:16 > 0:56:19It is these jewels which we are now discovering
0:56:19 > 0:56:24and bringing out of the archive to an appreciative audience.
0:56:24 > 0:56:27Private 3895 Ivor Bertie Gurney
0:56:27 > 0:56:30is finally attracting the reputation he deserves.
0:56:37 > 0:56:39You know, what I love most about Gurney's poetry
0:56:39 > 0:56:43is that he is a celebrant of the particular.
0:56:43 > 0:56:46"The dearness of common things," as he puts it.
0:56:46 > 0:56:49It matters that he tells us which Gloucestershire hillside
0:56:49 > 0:56:54he is walking over or which village in France he is marching through.
0:56:54 > 0:56:59And he gives us as well the sense of the daily life of soldiers.
0:56:59 > 0:57:01He tells us what he's been eating.
0:57:01 > 0:57:04He creates a "Catalogue Aria" of trench rations
0:57:04 > 0:57:08Machonachie, Fray Bentos, Tickler's jam.
0:57:08 > 0:57:11This is local detail that you don't get in any of the other
0:57:11 > 0:57:13soldier-poets' work.
0:57:13 > 0:57:17And yes, he has those iconic moments of going over the top
0:57:17 > 0:57:21or being under artillery bombardment, but he also gives us
0:57:21 > 0:57:24that fuller picture of the soldier's experience.
0:57:24 > 0:57:28The boredom of trench life, the diurnal, the banal,
0:57:28 > 0:57:34what the cafe au lait is like in the local estaminet.
0:57:34 > 0:57:38So Gurney's vision then, is more capacious, I would argue.
0:57:38 > 0:57:42It's more varied and it's more generous
0:57:42 > 0:57:46than any other of the soldier-poets of the First World War.
0:57:51 > 0:57:53The songs I had are withered
0:57:53 > 0:57:55Or vanished clean...
0:58:07 > 0:58:10PIANO MUSIC PLAYS