Editing Siegfried Sassoon (section)

==Early life==
[[File:First World War 1914 - 1918- War Poets HU50506.jpg|thumbnail|left|Sassoon (front) with his brother Hamo and other students on the morning after a college [[May Ball]] at Cambridge University in 1906]]
Siegfried Sassoon was born to a Jewish father and an [[Anglo-Catholic]] mother, and grew up in the neo-gothic mansion named Weirleigh (after its builder [[Harrison Weir]]) in Matfield, Kent.<ref name=KSC10122010>{{Cite news|title=War poet was tasty with bat |first=Frank |last=Chapman |newspaper=Kent and Sussex Courier |date=10 December 2010 |page=42}}</ref> His father, Alfred Ezra Sassoon (1861–1895), son of [[Sassoon David Sassoon]], was a member of the wealthy [[Baghdadi Jews|Baghdadi Jewish]] [[Sassoon family|Sassoon merchant family]]. Siegfried's mother, [[Theresa Thornycroft|Theresa]], belonged to the [[Thornycroft family]], sculptors responsible for many of the best-known statues in London; among them her brother, Sir [[Hamo Thornycroft]].

There was no German ancestry in Sassoon's family; his mother named him Siegfried because of her love of [[Richard Wagner|Wagner]]'s operas. His middle name, Loraine, was the surname of a clergyman she respected.

Siegfried was the second of three sons, the others being Michael and Hamo. When he was four years old his parents separated. During his father's weekly visits to the boys, Theresa locked herself in the drawing-room. In 1895, Alfred Sassoon died of [[tuberculosis]].<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=Siegfried Sassoon |url=https://war.web.ox.ac.uk/siegfried-sassoon |access-date=2024-07-23 |website=War Collections |publisher=University of Oxford |language=en}}</ref>

Sassoon was educated at the [[New Beacon School]], Sevenoaks, Kent; at [[Marlborough College]], Wiltshire; and at [[Clare College, Cambridge]], where from 1905 to 1907 he read history. He left Cambridge without a degree and spent the years after 1907 hunting, playing [[cricket]] and writing verse, some of which he published privately.<ref name=":1" />

Although his father had been disinherited from the Sassoon fortune for marrying a woman who was not Jewish,<ref name=":1" /> Siegfried had a small private income that allowed him to live modestly without having to earn a living. Later, he was left a large legacy by an aunt, [[Rachel Beer]], allowing him to buy the great estate of [[Heytesbury#Notable buildings|Heytesbury House]] in Wiltshire.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://siegfried-sassoon.firstworldwarrelics.co.uk/html/heytesbury.html| title = Heytesbury House| access-date = 3 March 2012| archive-date = 21 November 2019| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20191121222521/http://siegfried-sassoon.firstworldwarrelics.co.uk/html/heytesbury.html| url-status = dead}}</ref>

His first published success, "The Daffodil Murderer" (1913), was a parody of [[John Masefield]]'s ''[[The Everlasting Mercy]]''. [[Robert Graves]], in ''[[Good-Bye to All That]]'', describes it as a "parody of Masefield which, midway through, had forgotten to be a parody and turned into rather good Masefield."

=== Cricket ===
Sassoon played for his village cricket team at a young age, and his brothers and three of his tutors were cricket enthusiasts. The Marchant family were neighbouring landowners, and [[Frank Marchant]] was captain of the county side between 1890 and 1897. Sassoon played for his house at [[Marlborough College|Marlborough]], once taking 7 wickets for 18 runs, and during this time he contributed three poems to ''Cricket'' magazine.<ref name="coldham" />

For some years around 1910 he often played for Bluemantles Cricket Club, at the [[Nevill Ground]], in Tunbridge Wells, sometimes alongside [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]. He later played for a [[Downside Abbey]] team called "The Ravens", continuing playing well into his seventies.<ref name="KSC10122010" /><ref name="coldham">Coldham, James D (1954) [http://www.espncricinfo.com/cricketer/content/story/276146.html Siegfried Sassoon and cricket], ''[[The Cricketer]]'', June 1954. Republished at [[CricInfo]].</ref>