This talk given by Guy Cuthbertson will talk about his editing Edward Thomas's prose and especially The Icknield Way (1913), which he is currently working on for the Oxford University Press volume entitled Pilgrimages.  The talk will explore Edward Thomas's writing and walking, as well as the Icknield Way, an ancient road that has changed significantly since Thomas's day.

Guy Cuthbertson's research has been focused on Edwardian England and the First World War, and he has been working on Edward Thomas's poetry and prose ever since his D.Phil at Oxford University. With Lucy Newlyn, he edited Branch-Lines: Edward Thomas and Contemporary Poetry (2007), and he is a General Editor of Edward Thomas's prose for Oxford University Press. He has edited two volumes of Thomas's prose, Autobiographies and England and Wales (the latter co-edited with Lucy Newlyn), and he is currently editing a third volume, looking at Thomas's writing about journeys and roads, and especially The Icknield Way and In Pursuit of Spring. In 2018, he gave the British Academy's Chatterton Lecture on Poetry, choosing 'Edward Thomas and Simplicity' as his topic. With Thomas and more widely, he is interested in simplicity in writing but also simple living, 'simple life' movements and the desire to get 'back to the land'. Beyond Thomas, he has also worked on Wilfred Owen, and his biography of that poet was published by Yale University Press in 2014. His most recent book, Peace at Last: A Portrait of Armistice Day, 11 November 1918, was published by Yale in 2018. He is Head of the School of Humanities at Liverpool Hope University.