A London commemorative plaque for every day in 2016. The plaques are selected from all walks of life, and all points of the London compass – and I'm taking requests too!
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The war poet Siegfried Sassoon is commemorated in London with both a blue (English Heritage) and a green (City of Westminster) plaque.
His green plaque marks the location – the building no longer stands – of his post-World War One relocation to London.
Having been awarded the Military Cross for bravery (his courage was described by fellow poet Robert Graves as being “suicidal”), Sassoon made a famous stand against the war. In 1917, after a spell of convalescent leave, he refused to return to the front.
While convalescing at Craiglockhart in Edinburgh, Sassoon met Wilfred Owen. A manuscript of the latter’s Anthem For Doomed Youth, bearing Sassoon’s handwritten suggestions and amendments, is part of the collection at the Imperial War Museum.
Both men returned to the front and Owen was killed in 1918. Sassoon is widely credited with bringing Owen’s work to a wider audience in his post-war capacity as literary editor with the left wing publication The Daily Herald.
The plaque pictured can be found at Tufton Street in Westminster. His blue plaque is at Campden Hill Square in Kensington.
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