Best Poets of Members

Robert Nichols (1893-1944) was the wartime author of Ardours and Endurances; Also, A Faun's Holiday and Poems & Phantasies, a collection of war poetry published in 1917.

Nichols, who struck up friendships with fellow war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke (the latter was killed in action in 1915), was a Winchester and Oxford-educated Georgian poet.

Nichols' First World War military service - which lasted from from 1914-16 - saw him participate in the Battle of Loos in 1915 in the role of artillery officer.

His front-line service was however brief - after just a few weeks serving in the trenches he was invalided home with shell shock; an illness which caused him to be sent home to England in 1916. Subsequently serving with the British Ministry of Labour and Ministry of Information, he went on to pen war poetry that he often read to large gatherings, which included tours of America.

Ardours and Endurances; Also, A Faun's Holiday & Poems & Phantasies, published in 1917, perhaps Nichols' best known collection, represented his attempt to paint a canvas of the war on an epic scale.

The name of Robert Nichols has its place on the memorial in Westminster Abbey to poets of the First World War, and his first collections, Invocation (1915) and Ardours and Endurances (1917), speaking directly to the mood of a nation in the throes of war, achieved real popular success.

He went on to produce three more volumes of poetry, four plays that reached the London stage, ..