News

The Beaverbrook Vimy Prize is the Vimy Foundation’s flagship programme. Providing young students with a historical perspective second to none, the annual scholarship brings together youth from Canada, the United Kingdom and France, so that they can better appreciate the intertwined history of their three nations and come to understand the bravery and sacrifice of war.

The Beaverbrook Vimy Prize is awarded on the basis of essay submissions and interviews. Participants must be 15-17 years old with a 70% grade average at school and proven leadership skills. Winners take part in an intensive scholarship program in Europe, participating in educational seminars and museum events, including visits to the iconic Vimy War Memorial and other historic battlefields and gravesites, in England, Belgium and France.

Application deadline is February 15th, 2012.  Download a form from the Vimy Foundation's website.

Click here for more on the Vimy Foundation.

A new portrait of Wilfred Owen has been placed on display at Liverpool Cathedral.

Created by Anthony and Lorraine Brown, it is the first piece in a major new art project dedicated to soldiers through time and the impact of war on society. It features a background of images of memorabilia, photographs and, poignantly, Owen’s own hand written poems and letters.

More in the Liverpool Daily Post (November 1st 2011)

See also the Liverpool Cathedral website.

BBC Radio 4 broadcast about Wilfred Owen and the Forester's House, where Owen wrote his last letter.

Available for 7 days from November 10th.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016x2jy

Articles about the Forester's House:

A shrine to war poet hero Wilfred Owen

(The Telegraph, 13 November 2011)

How Wilfred Owen’s poetry lives on in his forest hideout

(Daily Mail, 24 October 2011)

The winner of this year's £5,000 HW Fisher Best First Biography Prize was Matthew Hollis for Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas, published by Faber.

Speaking on behalf of the judges, Michael Prodger said: ‘Matthew Hollis's Now All Roads Lead to France is not just an account of one of the First World War's less starry poets but of two worlds. The first is the febrile poetry world of the time, full of arguments, striving and intense friendships; the second is the world of creativity inside Thomas's head and just how the poems came about and were crafted. Hollis depicts both with extraordinary insight and in prose that is in the very best sense poetic.

Read about the prize on the Biographers' Club website.

An In Memoriam announcement for Wilfred Owen will appear in The Times on November 4th to mark the 93rd anniversary of his death.  It has been placed by the Wilfred Owen Association.

The notice reads:

OWEN Lieutenant Wilfred MC, poet, died while crossing the Sambre Canal, 4th November 1918. ‘And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.’