Rendezvous with Death: Artists and Writers in the Thick of it 1914 1918 - Hardcover

This book sheds new light on the colourful personalities including Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, Ivor Gurney, Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg, Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth, all major figures among Englands creative artists during the First World War. Thanks to the authors research and knowledge, the book is a very English story about the tragically short spring of English artistic creativity between 1910 and 1920; the greatest such renaissance since Shakespeare and Purcell in the 17th century. It focuses on these exceptional poets, composers and artists experiences in the front line and what resulted from these. A short personal Preface records that the authors father, Sergeant Major Anthony Geraghty (later anglicized as Garrity) survived one year and 271 days on the front line with the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders including the Somme, in which he served alongside the composer Butterworth in 13th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry.

Tony Geraghty is author of the bestselling history of the Special Air Service Regiment, Who Dares Wins. A blitz kid during the Second World War, he was buried by a V1 flying bomb. Conscripted into the army, he saw active service with 16th Independent Parachute Brigade in Egypt, and became a sergeant. As The Sunday Times chief reporter and defence correspondent, he covered conflicts such as Northern Ireland, the Biafran War and in the Middle East. In 1981 he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and saw active service during the First Gulf War, with RAF Nimrods on intelligence-gathering missions. He holds the United States medal for Meritorious Military Services and the UK Gulf Medal.