Hardy & WW1

Date:  Saturday, 14th November 2026

Time: 10am to 1pm

Cost: £20 members; £25 non-members

Venue: United Church Dorchester (main church)

When World War I broke out in August 1914, Hardy in his mid-seventies was deeply shaken, writing that the world seemed to be slipping backward into barbarism. His public response was a mixture of public duty, deep human pity, and profound cynicism toward war.

Despite his underlying pessimism and anti-war sympathies, he supported national efforts, participating in a Whitehall literary battalion and writing patriotic and civic verse like “Men who March Away” (1914) and “A Call to National Service” (1917).

Hardy is widely considered a literary ancestor and precursor to the First World War war poets, deeply influencing writers like Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden, and Rupert Brooke. Rather than an active soldier in the trenches, Hardy was a civilian observer whose anti-war and humanist verses set the template for modern disillusionment with military conflict.

Itinerary

10:00 - Chair's Welcome

10:15 - `Hardy & The Military` - Chris Copson

11.15 -  Poetry Reading

11.30 -  Coffee Break

11.45 -  Poetry Reading

12.15 -  WW1 letters between Vera Brittain and her Fiancée, Roland Leighton (whilst he was in the trenches)

13.00 -  Close

BOOK ONLINE

*At 2pm there will be an optional walk following the Poppy Trail around Dorchester, dependent on weather conditions on the day.

Event location map

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