This month sees the Swiss alpine resort of Davos play host to the annual World Economic Forum summit, but it also marks the centenary of the death of one of England’s greatest Edwardian poets. The worship of Mammon and the ascent of Parnassus are traditionally not easy bedfellows, but the two are linked by the Swiss town. It was here that this now little known poet succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of thirty.
James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915) deserves far greater acclaim and public recognition for his poetic accomplishments.
A prodigious linguist, fluent in French, German, Italian, Spanish and modern Greek, he read Classics at Oxford and took a further degree in Modern Languages at Cambridge, all with a view to entering the diplomatic service. He was posted to Constantinople in 1910 and Beirut in 1913, yet spent time in between convalescing in the Cotswolds, Paris and Switzerland from the malady he had contracted and which would ultimately prove fatal.
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