Wilfred Owen left home in Shrewsbury in 1911, at the age of eighteen, to become lay assistant to the vicar of a country parish; seven years later, having won an MC for gallantry, he was killed in action. This selection from the full 1967 edition of his letters includes some early examples, butconcentrates on the last seven years of his short life. His letters - almost all to his mother - constitute his self-portrait: the finest English poet of the First World War speaking in his own person from the age of five until the eve of his death.