Richard Aldington Richard Aldington ( 8 July 1892 – 27 July 1962 ) , born Edward Godfree Aldington , was an English writer and poet . Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry , the 1929 novel , " Death of a Hero " , and the controversy arising from his 1955 " Lawrence of Arabia : A Biographical Inquiry " . His 1946 biography , " Wellington " , was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize . Early life . Aldington was born in Portsmouth , the son of a solicitor , and educated at Dover College , and for a year at the University of London . He was unable to complete his degree because of the financial circumstances of his family . He met the poet H . D . in 1911 and they married two years later . Imagism . Aldington ' s poetry was associated with the Imagist group , and his poetry forms almost one third of the Imagists ' inaugural anthology " Des Imagistes " ( 1914 ) . Ezra Pound had in fact coined the term " imagistes " for H . D . and Aldington , in 1912 . At this time Aldington ' s poetry was unrhymed free verse , whereas later in his verse the cadences are long and voluptuous , the imagery weighted with ornament . He was one of the poets around the proto - Imagist T . E . Hulme ; Robert Ferguson in his life of Hulme portrays Aldington as too squeamish to approve of Hulme ' s robust approach , particularly to women . However , Aldington shared Hulme ' s conviction that experimentation with traditional Japanese verse forms could provide a way forward for " avant - garde " literature in English , and went often to the British Museum to examine Nishiki - e prints illustrating such poetry . He knew Wyndham Lewis well , also , reviewing his work in " The Egoist " at this time , hanging a Lewis portfolio around the room and on a similar note of tension between the domestic and the small circle of London modernists regretting having lent Lewis his razor when the latter announced with hindsight a venereal infection . Going out without a hat , and an interest in Fabian socialism , were perhaps unconventional enough for him . At this time he was also an associate of Ford Madox Ford , helping him with a hack propaganda volume for a government commission in 1914 and taking dictation for " The Good Soldier " when H . D . found it too harrowing . In 1915 , Aldington and H . D . moved within London , away from Holland Park very near Ezra Pound and Dorothy , to Hampstead , close to D . H . Lawrence and Frieda . Their relationship became strained by external romantic interests and the stillborn birth of their child . Between 1914 and 1916 he was literary editor of " The Egoist " , and columnist there . He was assistant editor with Leonard Compton - Rickett under Dora Marsden . The gap between the Imagist and Futurist groups was defined partly by Aldington ' s critical disapproval of the poetry of Filippo Marinetti . World War I and aftermath . He joined the army in 1916 , was commissioned in the Royal Sussexs in 1917 and was wounded on the Western Front . Aldington never completely recovered from his war experiences , and may have continued to suffer from the then - unrecognised phenomenon of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder . Aldington and H . D . attempted to mend their marriage in 1919 , after the birth of her daughter by a friend of writer D . H . Lawrence , named Cecil Gray , with whom she had become involved and lived with while Aldington was at war . However , she was by this time deeply involved in a lesbian relationship with the wealthy writer Bryher , and she and Aldington formally separated , both becoming romantically involved with other people , but they did not divorce until 1938 . They remained friends , however , for the rest of their lives . Relationship with T . S . Eliot . He helped T . S . Eliot in a practical way , by persuading Harriet Shaw Weaver to appoint Eliot as his successor at " The Egoist " ( helped by Pound ) , and later in 1919 with an introduction to the editor Bruce Richmond of the " Times Literary Supplement " , for which he reviewed French literature . He was on the editorial board , with Conrad Aiken , Eliot , Lewis and Aldous Huxley , of Chaman Lall ' s London literary quarterly " Coterie " published 1919 – 1921 . With Lady Ottoline Morrell , Leonard Woolf and Harry Norton he took part in Ezra Pound ' s scheme to ' get Eliot out of the bank ' ( Eliot had a job in the international department of Lloyd ' s , a London bank , and well - meaning friends wanted him full - time writing poetry ) . This manoeuvre towards Bloomsbury came to little , with Eliot getting £50 and unwelcome publicity in the " Liverpool Post " , but gave Lytton Strachey an opening for mockery . Aldington made an effort with " A Fool i ' the Forest " ( 1924 ) to reply to the new style of poetry launched by " The Waste Land " . He was being published at the time , for example in " The Chapbook " , but clearly took on too much hack work just to live . He suffered some sort of breakdown in 1925 . His interest in poetry waned , and he was straighforwardly jealous of Eliot ' s celebrity . His attitude towards Eliot shifted , from someone who would mind the Eliots ' cat in his cottage ( near Reading , Berkshire , in 1921 ) , and to whom Eliot could confide his self - diagnosis of abulia . Aldington became a supporter of Vivienne Eliot in the troubled marriage , and savagely satirized her husband as " Jeremy Cibber " in " Stepping Heavenward " ( Florence 1931 ) . He was at this time living with Arabella Yorke ( real given name Dorothy ) , a lover since Mecklenburgh Square days . It was a lengthy and passionate relationship , coming to an end when he went abroad . Later life . He went into self - imposed ' exile ' from England in 1928 . He lived in Paris for years , living with Brigit Patmore , and being fascinated by Nancy Cunard whom he met in 1928 . After his divorce in 1938 he married Netta , née McCullough , previously Brigit ' s daughter - in - law as Mrs . Michael Patmore . " Death of a Hero " , published in 1929 , was his literary response to the war , commended by Lawrence Durrell as ' the best war novel of the epoch ' . It was written while he was living on the island of Port - Cros in Provence as a development of a manuscript from a decade before . Opening with a letter to the playwright Halcott Glover , the book takes a variable but generally satirical , cynical and critical posture , and belabours Victorian and Edwardian cant . He went on to publish several works of fiction . In 1930 , he published a bawdy translation of " The Decameron " . In 1933 , his novel titled " All Men are Enemies " appeared ; it was a romance , as the author chose to call it , and a brighter book than " Death of a Hero " , even though Aldington took an anti - war stance again . In 1942 , having moved to the United States with his new wife Netta Patmore , he began to write biographies . The first was one of Wellington ( " The Duke : Being an Account of the Life & Achievements of Arthur Wellesley , 1st Duke of Wellington , " 1943 ) . It was followed by works on D . H . Lawrence ( " Portrait of a Genius , But . . . , " 1950 ) , Robert Louis Stevenson ( " Portrait of a Rebel , " 1957 ) , and T . E . Lawrence ( " Lawrence of Arabia : A Biographical Inquiry , " 1955 ) . Aldington ' s biography of T . E . Lawrence caused a scandal on its publication , and an immediate backlash . It made many controversial assertions . He was the first to bring to public notice the fact of Lawrence ' s illegitimacy . He also asserted that Lawrence was homosexual . Lawrence lived a celibate life , and none of his close friends ( of whom several were homosexual ) had believed him to be gay . He attacked Lawrence as a liar and a charlatan , claims which have colored Lawrence ' s reputation ever since . Only later were confidential government files concerning Lawrence ' s career released , allowing the accuracy of Lawrence ' s own account to be gauged . Aldington ' s own reputation has never fully recovered from what came to be seen as a venomous attack upon Lawrence ' s reputation . Many believed that Aldington ' s suffering in the bloodbath of Europe during World War I caused him to resent Lawrence ' s reputation , gained in the Middle Eastern arena . Aldington died in Sury - en - Vaux , Cher , France on 27 July 1962 , shortly after being honoured and feted in Moscow on the occasion of his seventieth birthday and the publication of some of his novels in Russian translation . He didn ' t approve of the Communist " party line " , though , and the Russians didn ' t succeed in making him endorse it . His politics had in fact moved far towards the right — opinions he shared with Lawrence Durrell , a close friend since the 1950s — but he had felt shut out by the British establishment after his T . E . Lawrence book . He lived in Provence , at Montpellier , Aix - en - Provence and Sury - en - Vaux . On 11 November 1985 , Aldington was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey ' s Poet ' s Corner . The inscription on the stone is a quotation from the work of a fellow Great War poet , Wilfred Owen . It reads : " My subject is War , and the pity of War . The Poetry is in the pity . " A savage style and embitterment . Aldington could write with an acid pen . He accused the Georgian poets of being " regional in their outlook and in love with littleness . They took a little trip for a little weekend to a little cottage where they wrote a little poem on a little theme . " He also , however , provided aid and support to other literary figures , even those , such as the alcoholic Harold Monro , whose work he attacked most viciously . Alec Waugh , who met him through Harold Monro , described him as embittered by the war , and offered Douglas Goldring as comparison ; but took it that he worked off his spleen in novels like " The Colonel ' s Daughter " ( 1931 ) , rather than letting it poison his life . His novels in fact contained thinly - veiled , disconcerting ( at least to the subjects ) portraits of some of his friends ( Eliot , D . H . Lawrence , Pound in particular ) , the friendship not always surviving . Lyndall Gordon characterises the sketch of Eliot in the memoirs " Life for Life ' s Sake " ( 1941 ) as ' snide ' . As a young man he enjoyed being cutting about William Butler Yeats , but remained on good enough terms to visit him in later years at Rapallo . The London " Times " obituary in 1962 described him as an " an angry young man of the generation before they became fashionable " , and who ' " remained something of an angry old man to the end " . References . Le Maudit - Poem " The Religion of Beauty " . " The Religion of Beauty " ( subtitle " Selections From the Aesthetes " ) was a prose and poetry anthology edited by Aldington and published in 1950 . Listed below are the authors Aldington included , providing insight into Aldingtons generation and tastes : Prose . Aubrey Beardsley – Max Beerbohm – Vernon Lee – Edward MacCurdy – Fiona MacLeod – George Meredith – Alice Meynell – George Moore – William Morris – Frederick W . H . Myers – Walter Pater – Robert Ross – Dante Gabriel Rossetti – John Ruskin – John Addington Symonds – Arthur Symons – Rachel Annand Taylor – James McNeill Whistler Poetry . William Allingham – Henry C . Beeching – Oliver Madox Brown – Olive Custance – John Davidson – Austin Dobson – Lord Alfred Douglas – Evelyn Douglas – Edward Dowden – Ernest Dowson – Michael Field – Norman Gale – Edmund Gosse – John Gray – William Ernest Henley – Gerard Manley Hopkins – Herbert P . Horne – Lionel Johnson – Andrew Lang – Eugene Lee - Hamilton – Maurice Hewlett – Edward Cracroft Lefroy – Arran and Isla Leigh – Amy Levy – John William Mackail – Digby Mackworth Dolben – Fiona MacLeod – Frank T . Marzials – Théophile Julius Henry Marzials – George Meredith – Alice Meynell – Cosmo Monkhouse – George Moore – William Morris – Frederick W . H . Myers – Roden Noël – John Payne – Victor Plarr – A . Mary F . Robinson – William Caldwell Roscoe – Christina Rossetti – Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Algernon Charles Swinburne – John Addington Symonds – Arthur Symons – Rachel Annand Taylor – Francis Thompson – John Todhunter – Herbert Trench – John Leicester Warren , Lord de Tabley – Rosamund Marriott Watson – Theodore Watts - Dunton – Oscar Wilde – Margaret L . Woods – Theodore Wratislaw – W . B . Yeats