A remarkable 20th century life
This is an online event hosted on the British Library platform. Bookers are sent a link in advance giving access and can watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time.
Drawing from her new biography, Trauma, Primitivism, and the First World War: The Making of Frank ‘Toronto’ Prewett, Joy Porter explores the extraordinary life of this Canadian veteran, poet and exceptional man of letters, and the history of trauma, literary expression and the power of self-representation after World War I.
While serving with the British forces on the Western front during World War I, Prewett was thrown from his horse and suffered severe back injuries in one battle and clawed his way out of the earth after being buried alive in another. Recovering at the same psychiatric hospital as Siegfried Sassoon, Prewett was encouraged to ‘dress up’. Yet in so doing, he took on an entirely fictitious identity as an indigenous Canadian named Toronto.