Ewart Alan Mackintosh in Memoriam: Leadership, Patriotism and Posthumous Commemoration

Neil McLennan looks at the poetry of Ewart Alan Mackintosh – a second lieutenant who won the Military Cross for valorous conduct at Arras and who was later killed at Cambrai in November 1917. Mackintosh, McLennan argues, was a devoted and conscientious leader of men, motivated more by an attachment to Scottish landscape, tradition, and loyalty to his comrades than by a hatred of the enemy. McLennan charts the course of Mackintosh’s post-war legacy, moving from near complete obscurity – through a 2004 biography, a monument at the Saint Hubert Chapel in France, anthologisation, and involvement in national centenary commemorations – towards an increasingly central role in the British Great War literary canon.