Purely Platonic?

It is fairly well known that Owen and Sassoon were more or less homosexual, with each other though I am doubtful. I say more or less because Sassoon later went on to marry and have a daughter.
Both having been middle class Public School boys of the era their proclivity is not surprising. This was more a norm than an aberration.
But, by my saying this please don't take it as a slight on any of their characters.
Seigfreid Sassoon is my own last personal hero and typifies to me the most outstanding example of personal integrity, courage and compassion I can think of. To my mind only Ghandi comes within the same sphere of depth of character.
SS was that rarest of creatures, an artist both physically brave, morally courageous, intelligent, compassionate and ultimately, sensible.

By the way, the film does allude to his sexuality when Rivers mentions it in guarded terms about (I think) the danger of the press finding out and making play of it in view of his political stance.

Sassoon was homosexual. Whether it was a natural inclination of his own, or the result of the English educational system (which his off & on friend, Robert Graves, blamed non-comedically for "creating" many inadvertant homosexuals), is not a distinction I've been able to make. His autobiographies cover the subject best. He and Owen were not lovers. Owen was mainly impressed by the fact that Sassoon had established a name for himself in the feild that Owen wanted to succeed in; poetry. Sassoon admits many times throughout his writings that he was a bit of a snob, a character fact that comes through very well in the film as it accurately portrays how, initially, he had little patience or sympathy for Owen. Fortunately, their relationship improved, but never beyond the platonic.
Incidentally (irrelevantly?) he wasn't getting-it-on with Graves either.

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Read the Wikipedia articles on both men. They were good friends, and Owen was more or less in love with Sassoon, but the feeling wasn't mutual.

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I thoroughly agree with you, Shopnowandsave, about Sir Siegfried Sassoon's outstanding qualities as a writer and as a man.

Though he is mainly remembered, if at all (he is thoroughly unknown in America, a country that clearly needs to read writers like him!) as a great anti-war poet, his novels are his best stuff. I think the key text is Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928) an autobiographical novel which is one of the most outstanding portrayals of a gay childhood I know. A memorably beautiful book.






If the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard, It can also be like a chicken-pox mark.