Episode 74. David Jones in the Great War

SYNOPSIS

When published in 1937 In Parenthesis, the novel-length epic poem by David Jones (1895-1974) was hailed by T S Eliot as a work of genius and by W H Auden as the best book about the First World War. It was written while David Jones was establishing a successful parallel career as a painter, wood engraver and maker of inscriptions, which would lead Kenneth Clark, the great art historian, to describe Jones in the 1960s as the greatest living British painter.

Growing up in Brockley, South London in a devout lower middle class family, Jones showed early promise as an artist and studied at the Camberwell School of Art for four years before enlisting in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers at the outbreak of war. All told, he served at the Front for 117 weeks, longer than any other poet. The weekly experience of artillery bombardment left its mark in a post-war stress disorder, but the uplifting vision of a Catholic chaplain presiding over the Mass in a disused barn near Ypres set off a slow conversion to Catholicism in 1921.

The distinguished critic, Thomas Dilwell is uniquely placed to assess Jones’s unique aesthetic contribution to modernist art and literature, having met him four times in London in the early 1970s, where he encountered a man of great emotional warmth who was possessed of a gift for friendship.

GUESTS

Professor Thomas Dilworth has taught for many years at the University of Windsor, Ontario and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has published over 100 articles on major literary figures. Acknowledged as the pre-eminent reader and interpreter of the work of David Jones, his books including the biography David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet; Reading David Jones, and David Jones in the Great War.

Simon’s interview with Thomas Dilworth was recorded online on 26 August 2025.