Laurence Binyon

This is a critical biography of Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) who is best remembered today for his World War I elegy "For The Fallen" carved on countless war graves and recited annually at Remembrance Sunday services. Binyon was a poet, dramatist, translator, art historian and critic. During his forty-year career at the British Museum, he built a world reputation as a pioneering scholar and interpreter of Eastern art, one of the first to challenge the West's myopic assumption that it held a monopoly on beauty and truth. This biography is intended for scholars and students of Victorian and modern literature, art historians and those working on Asian art - especially Japanese, Chinese, Indian and Persian art.