WILFRED OWEN is the probably most famous and eloquent poet to emerge from the mud and blood of the First World War.

Yet he was virtually unknown at the time of his death, at 25, when he was machine-gunned trying to get his company across the Oise-Sambre Canal - a mere seven days before the Armistice.

If the attack had been called off ten minutes earlier Owen, who won the Military Cross the previous month, would have survived the war. His mother received the fateful telegram informing her of his death on November 11 - the day the war ended.

But his poetry lives on. The composer Benjamin Britten set it to music in his powerful War Requiem of 1961 - securing Owen's place as the national poet of war.

For decades very little was known about Owen's life as his public image was firmly controlled by his family and friends, not least by his brother Harold, who was terrified lest anyone should suspect Owen of having been gay.

Dominic Hibberd, in this timely biography, has discovered new information at virtually every point of the poet's life.

He pieces together the reality of his childhood, from his birth at Plas Wilmot, Oswestry, Shropshire, in March 1893, to his work as a pupil-teacher; the Evangelical pressures on him from 1911-13 when he worked as a parish assistant; his time as a tutor in France when he began to develop as a poet; his volunteering for military service in 1915; his terrible experiences at the Front in 1917; the questions over his shellshock and the unjust accusation of cowardice; his treatment at Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, where he met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged him to write about the war; his sexual orientation and gay friends in London; and his final weeks in France, which were a victory for him as a man, officer and poet - as well as a tragedy.

Wordsworth said all good poetry arose from "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" allied to long and deep thought.

The time spent away from combat recovering from shellshock enabled Owen to find his mature voice as a poet.

In March 1918 he was sent to Northern Command Depot at Ripon, a huge army camp that catered for more than 30,000 men. His creative energy came flooding back as he realised he was destined to return to the Front.

During his time off, Owen would retreat to the attic of a cottage at 7 Borrage Lane, Ripon, and relive the war experiences that nearly drove him mad the previous year and articulate them as memorable lyrics.

This compelling biography brings to life a complex, endearing and deeply impressive man.

Updated: 09:42 Wednesday, October 30, 2002