A decent collection of Second World War poetry, hamstrung by the decision to fish from a small pool. Brian Gardner's selection restricts itself to British poets, despite America's much larger role in the conflict compared to the First World War, and despite the fact that the more global nature of the fighting affected many more countries than the First. (I would recommend Edward Hudson's more recent collection, even though it is shorter.) Nonetheless, there is a rewarding clarity to the poems. Even if they're not always the best, objectively speaking, Gardner is right when he notes the 'essential honesty' that exists in times of war (pg. xxiv). One cannot lie in war, at least not to oneself, so there's no falseness or affectation in any of the pieces.

For whatever reason, there seems to have been less great poetry that came out of the Second World War than the First, when heavyweights like Owen, Sassoon and McCrae wrote enduring pieces that still retain their power today. One can speculate why this is the case. Perhaps it was a people's war, more total than the First, and less focused on the educated, literary officer class that wrote so well of the previous war. Perhaps the modernizing world had found – in music, radio and, particularly, cinema – other mediums of entertainment, and artistic expression found release elsewhere instead of solely in poetry.

I think one reason – which one can trace in the progressing mood of the pieces in Gardner's collection – is that there was less of a disillusionment in 1939 and 1940 than there was between 1914-18. In that earlier war, Europe exited a golden age and – the war not over by Christmas as they had confidently promised – spent the blood of the best of its youth in mud and gas and shards of metal. A profound bitterness and energy and sea-change in outlook was bound to colour some great poetry.

In the Second, there was less of a disillusionment among the people. People knew this time what they were heading into, because the first war was, tragically, so recent to them. (When an unprecedented shock did occur – such as the blitzkrieg into France in May 1940 and finding German panzers poised to invade Britain – it allows for some of the best poetry in Gardner's collection, such as Dorothy L. Sayers' 'The English War'.) Not coincidentally, given this weariness at the prospect of another exhausting conflict, some of the best poems in the book come at the end. There is a sense of release in the 'Victory' poems, when peace is about to break out onto a new world. However, the book ends with a coda that soberly warns of the power of the newly-used atomic bomb – the 'terrible Rain' that may wash over the land. It is a prospect that, amazingly, one still needs to be wary of in 2017. ( )