The Alien in the Chapel

The works of World War I English poets are a huge focus of interest as anniversaries crop up over the next four years. But one poet has been neglected, with his poems not in print since Leonard and Virginia Woolf published them in 1926. Ferenc Bekassy was Hungarian but was educated in Britain and wrote in English. He was a close friend of Rupert Brooke and in love with the same girl, Noel Olivier. George Gomori, a Cambridge academic, and Mari Gomori, both Hungarians, have collected most of Bekassy's poems, along with some newly discovered letters between Bekassy and Noel Olivier, as well as other friends including John Maynard Keynes. There is a poignant end to the story. Having ignored Keynes' advice not to return home to fight for his country, he was killed on the Russian front a few months after joining up. Then when a memorial was put up to members of King's College, Cambridge, killed during the War, Bekassy's name was omitted because he fought on the wrong side.