War poetry
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Your support makes all the difference.IT SHOULD not surprise Robert Fisk ("Oh! What a lovely holy war", Review, 25 June) that an Iranian soldier looked at him with incomprehension after a piece of Siegfried Sassoon's poetry had been read to him. He should remember that the soldier's religion is about 600 years younger than Christianity, and is at an age when Christians had not yet burnt Joan of Arc, no one had heard of the Spanish Inquisition, and monks in England and Wales had about 150 years to go before Henry VIII made them homeless.
It might be more appropriate to compare "First Gulf War poetry" with that written, say, in Britain and France during the Hundred Years' War. A search for literature - especially any written by soldiers - during that period might make an interesting project for someone.
Dafydd Price Jones
Finchampstead, Berkshire
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