Grave - Basil Bunting (1st March 1900 to 17th April 1985)

 

While in the Lake District I drove to Sedbergh to find a Quaker Meeting House. Next to it lies a burial ground in which lies a modernist poet. I’ve visited Quaker cemeteries before and all the headstones are the same size and shape. This was no exception.

 

Basil was born into a Quaker family and educated at two Quaker schools. This pacifist upbringing lead to him being imprisoned when he refused the call-up notice to join the army as World War One raged. He was arrested as a conscientious objector and handed to the military. He refused to obey orders and served a sentence of more than a year in prison.

 

After his release he moved to Paris, always writing. Back in England he married his first wife aged 29 (with whom he had two children) and the couple spent the 1930s moving from Italy, the Canary Islands and the United States. The marriage ended in divorce. After travelling, studying and writing in Iran (then Persia) World War Two broke out. He served in British Military Intelligence in Persia. After the war he left government service to become the correspondent for The Times newspaper in Iran. He married a Kurdish woman Sima Alladadian but as she was thirty years his junior and seen as underage he was fired from the British embassy (they had two sons.)

 

He returned to Newcastle and worked as an editor on the Evening Chronicle newspaper. In sixties he taught in universities in the UK and US. Though permanently short of money he continued writing publishing poetry and aged 66 he published his most famous poem Briggflatts (named after the village in Cumbria where he is now buried.)

 

He died in Hexham General Hospital aged 85 and now lies in this quaint Quaker burial ground. I saw a few cars in that hamlet but not a single person. I'd like to have entered the meeting house (built in the 1600s) but I'd left the motorhome partially blocking the lane. At Basil's grave I did a salute and left.

 

Letters of Basil Bunting (Alex Niven, editor) | Book review | The TLS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brigflatts Quaker Meeting