I have just been reading about Laurence COTTERELL, who died in 2001. LAURENCE COTTERELL’S career was multifarious. He was a poet and a patriot, a former boxer, a cavalry trooper and dispatch rider during the Second World War, a sometime friend to the Kray twins, a book reviewer and lecturer, a publicist and an adviser to a variety of publishing houses and literary organisations. A couple of his utterances I find very relevant today.
On a visit to the Hochwald Forest in the Rhineland, together with the Canadian V.C., Colonel Fred TILSTON, he reflected on the rows of graves, and wrote;
All men must die,
But here, the millions lie -
For most a third of life-span run,
For many, manhood scarce begun.
At the age of 15, he wrote ‘A Hymn to British Union’, containing the words;
Britain arise and cleanse your mighty name
From all the stains which lie upon your fame.
If you want to read more, there is an article here.