“Time is no stream to get fixed in”

Welsh poet Alun Lewis met an untimely death in WWII, but enjoyed a post-mortem career via the automatic writing of novelist Elizabeth Berridge. ERIC HOFFMAN looks at a strange episode from literary history.

At the outbreak of World War II, Alun Lewis (born 1 July 1915), joined the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers, though soon after changed his commission to an infantry battalion. Lewis died unexpectedly on 5 March 1944 while stationed in Burma, during a military campaign against the Japanese. He was 28 years old. Official reports written by the Army court, perhaps fearful of upsetting his family, and due to religious taboos, charitably claim that Lewis died accidentally – he stumbled off a hill and his firearm discharged and caused a fatal injury – though in fact all that is known is that he was discovered outside the latrine, freshly shaven, with a bullet wound in his head and a revolver in his hand. Six hours later, he succumbed to his…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 411

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