My wife, Kate, has an uncle from Guernsey who died during WW1. She had thought that he had died of flu and was buried ‘somewhere in France’. We decided to do some research and found that he had, in fact, been wounded, taken back to hospital in London but died ten days later. We also found he was buried in Nunhead Cemetery in South London.
We visited the cemetery, which was built by the same people as Highgate Cemetery and is ‘high Victorian’. We had been told that the grave may be difficult or, indeed, impossible to find. But we found it and, thanks to the War Graves Commission, it was in pristine condition.
I fell to thinking about Cyril Hugo, there in the cemetery during the dramatic decades since he died in 1916, unvisited. The cemetery itself was bombed during WW2. From this a poem emerged – not an art form I turn to very often, as I am a painter.
I have put together a video of the poem. The musical accompaniement is Vaughan Williams’ ‘A Sea Symphony – The Explorers’
By Paul Liddiard
