King's Own Royal Regiment Museum

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Lancaster and The King's Own go to War.

Generously supported by the Sir John Fisher Foundation.

Laurence Binyon

A Lancaster war poet

Laurence Binyon was born on 10th August 1869 in High Street, Lancaster, the son of a minister. For the first ten years of his life he lived in the local area, including in Burton in Lonsdale and his first poem was inspired by his view of Ingleborough. He studied at Oxford, graduating in 1893.

“For the Fallen” was written very early in the war, inspired by the Retreat from Mons. It was published in The Times on 21st September 1914, long before the full horrors of the conflict could be imagined.

Lines from ‘For the Fallen’ were imprinted on the memory of the nation. Later, one of the verses would be chiselled into the stone of war memorials throughout the country and incorporated into the Armistice Day ceremony.

“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”


Binyon was too old for active service in the war, and joined the Volunteer Civil Force. For periods from 1915 onwards he was a volunteer nursing orderly in the Red Cross hospital in France, some forty miles from the front line. It was from this experience that Binyon wrote “For Dauntless France”, an account of Britain’s aid to the French wounded.
‘For the Fallen’ was later set to music by Edward Elgar, and was described by J H Johnston as “perhaps the best known of the consolatory and inspirational elegies…. that found public favour during the later years of the war.”

Rudyard Kipling described it as “The most beautiful expression of sorrow in the English language”

Laurence Binyon died at Aldworth, Berkshire, on 10th March 1943.

For the Fallen
Manuscript copy presented to the people of Lancaster by Laurence Binyon.
Now in the care of Lancashire Record Office.

Binyon was in correspondence with Private Isaac Rosenberg, the war poet who served with the 11th and 1st Battalions of the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, and who was killed in action on 1st April 1918. Rosenberg has been described by some as the greatest of all the war poets. Binyon wrote an introductory memoir to the first edition of The Collected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg, edited by Gordon Bottomley in 1922.

Private Isaac Rosenberg, 11th and 1st Battalions, King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment.
Accession Number: KO1158/01
 

© Images are copyright, Trustees of the King's Own Royal Regiment Museum.
 You must seek permission prior to publication of any of our images.