His religious faith remained unwavering and he never allowed the horrors of war or the disillusionments of so-called peace to lead him into

His religious faith remained unwavering and he never allowed the horrors of war or the disillusionments of so-called peace to lead him into the iconoclastic (sometimes nihilistic) cynicism that beset so many minds during and after the First World War.Between the wars Dearmer was variously engaged as Examiner of Plays for the Lord Chamberlain, in the days of theatre censorship, and as a religious programes scout for the BBC. They were long in a muddy world of war, and men could not be blamed for looking down and seeing realism in mud. Dearmer tended to look up and see the stars, as real as the bloodied mud of the battlefields swirling around his boots. It was typical of the man that he hardly bothered to keep copies of what he wrote (including post-war novels and pageant scripts), or of press notices.Dearmer saw at least as much action as Owen or Sassoon, yet his verse contains none of the inspired bitterness (amounting to sheer genius) that invested their poetry and the work of other notable contemporaries.

His war poetry, Poems, first appeared in 1918 to acclamation on both sides of the Atlantic, and a peacetime collection, A Day's Delight, in 1923. She died of enteric fever while nursing wounded Serbs, in 1915, under appalling conditions. In that same year, Geoffrey's younger brother was killed at Gallipoli only days before Geoffrey landed there himself, as a subaltern in the Royal Fusiliers. After Gallipoli, Dearmer served in France in the Royal Army Service Corps, with a very sticky job in the mud of Flanders. Indeed, it was due to the efforts of others, somewhat to his embarrassment, that an unexpected wave of publicity greeted the appearance of a selection of his poetry, A Pilgrim's Song, published by John Murray on his 100th birthday in 1993.

Geoffrey Dearmer was born at Lambeth, in London, three days after the birth of Wilfred Owen, with whom he shared a background of religiosity. His father, Percy Dearmer, was a celebrated cleric, and was author or editor of numerous works on ecclesiastical themes. He was noted especially for his compilation of The English Hymnal. Geoffrey's mother, Mabel, was a well-known author of children's books, novels and plays in her day, being highly regarded by Bernard Shaw, among others, for her stage productions. I myself first came into contact with Campbell when we were both members of the organising committee of the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. Had it not been for Campbell and the late Sir John Inch taking the committee by the scruff of its collective neck, we would have found ourselves in a fiasco mess of Atlanta proportions. Later, he was to be the Vice-Commandant of the Games Village.