Commanding ... To encounter [Graves] in these pages is to feel something of the relentlessly explosive energy with which he lived the first half of his life. Wilson lands him like a Zeppelin bomb.

Observer

Jean Moorcroft Wilson has built an unassailable reputation as our leading authority on the poets of the Great War ... Combining intelligent and perceptive criticism of his work, with revealing insights into the man, this study of the devastating impact of the conflict on Graves makes for compelling reading. I cannot recommend it too highly

Nigel Jones, author of Rupert Brooke: Life, Death & Myth

Diligent and insightful ... Jean Moorcroft Wilson teases the truth from Graves's exaggerations, mis-rememberings and downright gibs ... She is by turns compassionate and caustic and is clear sighted … [Her] close reading of the war poems is illuminating.

The Times

Wilson unveils the poet behind the man struggling to make, not write, poetry [and] clarifies our understanding of what Graves was about

Literary Review

Consistently illuminating

Andrew Motion, Spectator

A sensitive rendering of the poet's formative years ... finely nuanced

Kirkus Reviews