Sidney Keyes

English poet Sidney Keyes was born in 1922 and began writing poetry when he was young. He published his only two collections while studying at the Queen’s College, Oxford University on a history scholarship. Following his graduation, he joined the British Army in 1942 and continued writing poetry until 1943, when he was killed in Tunisia while covering his platoon’s retreat. He was 20 years old.

Since his death, Keyes has been acknowledged as a major English poet of World War II. Clive James writes that his work is often marked by “sudden intensity,” and Carol Rumen suggests that Keyes work verse is “candid, unsentimental,” and “free of imitative gestures.” His work was gathered into Collected Poems (1988).