Books by Robert J Fanshawe

Set during World War One, The Cellist's Friend is the story of one man's battle to redeem his own cowardice while recovering from a near-fatal war wound. Ben has witnessed his cello player soldier friend shot for desertion. The soldier they nicknamed Cello Played his instrument while his firing squad sang the poem "Invictus" before they shot him. This seems a victory over death for Cello while showing Ben's cowardice at not revealing the truth of the incident that led to the flawed accusation of desertion. Recovering from his war and developing a love through exchanged letters for Pearl, the widow of the Jamaican soldier who saved him, Ben is haunted by flashbacks and the words of the poem "Invictus" and seeks redemption through poetry. He meets Cello's parents, telling them how he died but cannot tell them the whole truth or see how he might recover the actual cello played by their son at his execution. As Ben faces a return to duty and Pearl unexpectedly arrives in London, will their love blossom despite racial prejudice? And how will a writer friend of Pearl enable Ben to finally find the courage to face the terrible grief of Cello's parents and begin his own redemption?

This is a play about the last days of the WWI poet Wilfred Owen. A lot is known about the poets life, including all his letters that were kept and subsequently published along with all his poems. However, only very few of the poems were published in his lifetime, and it is not known how his soldiers, who he wrote the poems about, would have viewed them. Additionally, it is not known exactly how he met his end, only that he was killed on the banks of the Sambre Canal at Ors trying to secure the crossing.The play aims to fill those gaps in our knowledge through drama, as well as interpreting some of the poems in the light of what we now know about Owen, his place in literature, and the overall war.