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.