The arrival of The First World War Poetry Digital Archive has meant a giant leap forward in terms of understanding the war poets. The significance of being able to see the manuscripts online deepens our understanding of what these poets experienced and achieved.

We are very fortunate to publish the experience of two people who were intimately involved in putting Blunden on the digital archive. Alun Edwards was at the chalk face - he spent an extremely hot week or so in the hectic pursuit of sifting through Blunden’s manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas, Austin. He had to make the difficult decisions of what to publish. His article explains that process.

Alisa Miller had the subsequent detailed task of cataloguing the chosen items for the archive. She has written a most interesting article on her thoughts about Blunden as a consequence of her work.

We are delighted to present these two articles and are grateful to the authors for their generosity in giving their time to us in this way.

Adrian Barlow, author of our third commissioned article, is Director of Public Programmes and lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. He is a trustee of the English Association. The Great War in British Literature (2000), Second Reading: the future of English Literature at A level (2005) and World and Time: teaching literature in context (2009).

The first of our commissioned articles is written by Meg Crane. Meg teaches English at Tonbridge Grammar School, not far from Blunden’s childhood home in Yalding. She is the Chair of the Wilfred Owen Association and the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship (SSF). She also edits the SSF journal. In this article to describes how discovered and fell in love with Blunden’s poetry and reflects on what makes it so distinctive.

Poet and regular poetry reviewer, John Greening, has written a long sequence of verse letters to poets of the First World War. Two addressed to Edmund Blunden are published here in our second commissioned article.

This is the ninth extract of the rediscovered 11,000 word essay of Blunden's childhood memories written towards the end of his writing life. It was originally published in Edwardian England edited by Simon Nowell-Smith (1964, OUP).

The previous extracts introduce us to Edmund's village and nearby countryside, the church and its choir, his schools and teachers, love of Jules Verne, fishing and the game of cricket, seaside holidays and family members, siblings Lottie, Gilbert, Phyllis, Lancelot, Geoffrey, mother Georgina Margaret and father Charles Edmund.

In this next extract Edmund explains how his passion for reading developed and treats us to stories of exciting cricket matches and excursions.

The following article by David Miller gives a detailed picture of Blunden at a particular point in the war. It is the spring of 1917 when he and four of his fellow Christ's Hospital school friends who are in the same regiment, meet up in St. Omer (about 30 kilometres west of Ypres). They have their photo taken altogether (now referred to as The Feast of Five), and Blunden sends an account to the Editor of The Blue magazine of their day out of the trenches.
In the first section Blunden reveals how much of the schoolboy he still was; by the time he writes again to the Editor things have changed considerably and we can see how the process of the loss of innocence is well underway.

This article is presented to commemorate Armistice Day and the lives of Collyer and Tice who both died at Passchendaele.

David Miller attended Christ's Hospital from 1948 to 1955, after which he spent 33 years in the Army. He left early to take up writing as a full-time career and has derived particular pleasure from researching and writing history books. Three years ago he decided to research the history of Old Blues in World War One and has written a number of articles for the school magazine, as well as producing a new version of the school's Roll of Honour.

In this short article Margi Blunden introduces us to some of Blunden's essays published collectively as 'The Face of England'. The collection was recently mentioned in The Times Literary Supplement as a recommended read by a neglected author.

Amy Budd explores the connection between Blunden's home in Long Melford and the artist Mark Miller.

In this article Belgian author and teacher Chris Spriet, Vice-President of VIFF (Vrienden van het In Flanders Fields Museum, Ieper - The Friends of the In Flanders Fields Museum at Ypres) looks at Blunden’s ongoing relationship with Ypres and the battle of Passchendaele.

Ruth Martelli is the sister of Mark Miller who was married to Margi Blunden between 1966 - 1981. Ruth made a visit from her native America to Hall Mill (the Suffolk home of Edmund and Claire Blunden) in 1968. In her article she recalls her visit and meeting Edmund Bluden for the first time.