We will remember them, as Laurence Binyon's threnody reminds us, each Remembrance Day. But how will we remember? And what will we remember, now that they are all dead? How are we to understand the Great War? What was it for them and for those who came after them? What is it for us? What will it become?

Our conception of this war, and every war, has been profoundly shaped by works of art, of all kinds and conditions. Among the English-speaking peoples, ‘war poetry’ has been virtually synonymous with Great War poetry for several generations. In more than one sense, the war poets served to define the Western Front. Theirs is the last word on that unsurpassable place, which has come to epitomize the character of the conflict, to colour (or rather to black and white) its collective memory, and to instantiate its meaning, in the polity and the culture. The poetry has trumped the history, as historians never cease to complain. The poetic voice is instantly recognizable. After the Somme, after Passchendaele, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ no longer scans. It is ‘the pity of war’ that is the leitmotif and lightning conductor of strong feelings surrounding the political imperatives, the operational conduct, the moral calculus and the human cost of this war – and subsequent wars, right down to our own day. The voice carries, knowingly.