Edward Thomas was a complex individual. He was unhappy, dissatisfied and a depressive. These personality traits caused great anxiety and difficulties for his wife and children, and it is for these reasons that any book about him must give as much information as possible to the reader about the development of its subject. This is a highly readable book, greeted in most quarters by great acclaim; however, accepting that Matthew Hollis sets out to tell the facts of Thomas' final years, we are deprived of a chance of getting to the essence of Thomas himself. To fully appreciate the tale of a gifted but tormented writer's duel with what was to be his own desperate end-game, we surely need insight into his formative years. We are given from the outset a man on the verge of suicide, a man pained by his own suspicions that he is fundamentally afraid of confrontation; yet we must travel with him through his brave enlistment into the armed forces and onto the killing fields of France without any real knowledge of what has stirred up his demons and virtually wrecked his life.
Thomas was no coward. We need to know why he thought he was, and how his self-esteem had been eroded in earlier times. The reader can only despair at the luckless twist of fate that ended his life on Easter Monday, 1917. Having courageously weathered the worst of the Battle of Arras, Thomas emerged from his dug-out and proceeded to light his pipe. A shell passed by him and killed him without contact: it was so close that the blast of air felled him and stopped his heart.
This is a good book; it would possibly have been a great one if a chapter or two could have at least led us to some clues about the marring of a poet's soul.
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