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Foreign fields that are forever England
PETER FROST, in poetic mood, takes us back to the year the first world war started and how it bound the short lives of two great poets

The long hot summer of 1914 has been described as a picnic perfect. It’s a poet’s description.

In the iconic windmill in the pretty little North Norfolk holiday village of Cley next the Sea, poet Rupert Brooke was staying with another poet, Frances Cornford and her classics professor husband, confusingly also Francis. 

From the windmill the three of them would walk for miles along the dunes. They bought fish from local boats and picked wild marsh samphire. They argued about poetry and about their hopes for the future. They enjoyed frequent picnics.

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