It is Easy to Be Dead

Commemorating the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. Born in Aberdeen, Charles Sorley was studying in Germany when the First World War broke out and was briefly imprisoned as an enemy alien. He was one of the first to join the army in 1914. Killed in action a year later at the age of 20, his poems are among the most ambivalent, profound and moving war poetry ever written. It Is Easy To Be Dead tells the story of Sorley’s brief life through his work and music and songs from some of the greatest composers of the period including George Butterworth, Domhnall Ruadh Choruna, Ivor Gurney, John Ireland, Rudi Stephan and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Unique among the poets of the First World War, Sorley’s life and work fits chronologically into the patriotic idealism of such writers as Julian Grenfell and Rupert Brooke (whom Sorley criticised for his “sentimental attitude”). Perhaps because of his time in Germany before the war, Sorley perceived the truth of the war long before his fellow writers, and anticipated the grim disillusionment of later poets such as Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg and Siegfried Sassoon.