Field-Marshal Lord Wavell (1883-1950), educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst, was a professional soldier. He became known as an officer undeterred by convention and as an exceptional trainer of troops. In 1939 he was given the Middle East Command. His defeat of a numerically superior Italian army, with the capture of 130,000 prisoners, was as remarkable as his skillful conquest of Abyssinia. He was Viceroy of India from 1943 to 1947, and in the last years of his life in London he became President of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Kipling, Browning, Poetry, and Virgil Societies.
Other Men s Flowers is the famous anthology of Lord Wavell s favourite poems. The anthology features some of the most memorable poems by the greatest poets of the English canon including Shakespeare, Milton, Kipling, Browning, Coleridge and Yeats among others. To this memorial edition of a famous anthology, Lord Wavell's son has written a preface explaining how the book came into being and what pleasure its reception gave to the compiler: 'He never tried to conceal his evident surprise and delight at the success of the book. It brought him into association with writers whose work he had long enjoyed but whom he had never expected to know as friends. It also brought letters from all sorts and conditions of men in many lands who might not otherwise have addressed a Field Marshal.' Since it was first published in 1944, the anthology has never been out of print. Enhanced by Wavell s own introduction and annotations, Other Men s Flowers has encouraged and delighted many thousands of readers over the years
