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On July 22, 1916, Colonel Crawshay, the commanding officer of the 2nd battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, sat down to compose a letter. It was the same note he had already written so many times in the opening weeks of the Battle of the Somme.

“Dear Mrs Graves,” he began. “I very much regret to have to write and tell you your son has died of wounds. He was very gallant, and was doing so well and is a great loss.” This was Captain and poet, Robert, struck by an exploding shell a few days shy of his 21st birthday.

The shrapnel had pierced his lung, and the Army medics who found him on the battlefield presumed he would not last the night. But 6ft2ins and with a toughness that belied his poetic verse, Graves survived that, and the subsequent jolting hospital train ride to Rouen.

He arrived in such a terrible state that doctors described him as a “hopeless case”. By the time his obituary appeared in the British press, Graves was homeward bound and healing, writing letters to redress the premature news of his demise. He lived till he was 90!