Owen

DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country
If ever proof were needed that the 19th century was truly over, it came in the shape of the First World War. The horrors of that conflagration
scarred the English psyche to an extent that marked the end of an era - no more would sentimental Victorian poets talk about death and honour in the same breath. More than anything else, the conflict that decimated a generation of young Europeans opened the public's eyes to the sheer inhumanity of large-scale trench warfare, the pointlessness of it all.

Owen's genius was his ability to celebrate the ordinary without profaning it; he ha...