Summary
BOB BURROWS was clearing out his late mother's house when he found a small brown book. Though it was sepia-tinted with age, he could just make out the title: Ballads of Battle by Sergeant Joe Lee of the Black Watch, illustrated with his own sketches, published in 1916. Instead of throwing it into a box bound for a charity shop, he started to flick through it. "I was fascinated by the sketches, then I started to read the poetry. I got carried away. I'm not a great poetry fan but I was really moved by it."
Burrows decided to find out more about Sergeant Joe Lee, but it was harder than he had expected. A pile of literary reference books at his local library yielded not a mention of the Scottish soldier who had brought the battlefields of the First World War so vividly to life. Burrows, a retired banker from Macclesfield, was both frustrated and intrigued. Who was this man who wrote so movingly yet seemed to have slipped from the pages of history?See the full content of this document
Extract
Scotland's Forgotten War Poet
His five-year quest for Joe Lee has uncovered a remarkable story. A working-class man from Dundee who travelled the world and was a noted journalist, poet and artist. A brave soldier and a fine poet whose work was anthologised alongside Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. A man who survived the trenches to marry his sweetheart and counted many of the celebrities of 1930s London ...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
