WITH commemorations marking the start of World War One now underway, Wilfred Owen's iconic poem Dulce Et Decorum Est is more celebrated than ever.

Considered the war poet's masterpiece, it was inspired by reading female poet Jessie Pope's verse that appeared regularly in The Daily Mail.

Pope's 'jingoistic' poems were totally at odds with Owen's anti-war stance, and he cryptically dedicated his scathing condemnation of 'The Old Lie' to 'a certain poetess'.

Owen was particularly riled by Jessie's poem Who's For The Game?

In a letter to his mother Susan dated Wednesday, December 2 1914, he wrote: "The Daily Mail speaks very movingly about the 'duties shirked' by English young men...

"Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield?

"The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!"

Then in a letter again to Susan dated December 27, 1914, Owen mentions that he had "The Daily Mail given to him," which meant he was able to keep up with news from England.

Wilfred, who spent some of his childhood in Birkenhead, went on reading The Daily Mail throughout the war because it was on sale there and also given to soldiers who were wounded when they were in hospital.

He later removed the dedication to Pope from manuscripts of Dulce Et.

This story is featured in a new musical based on Owen's life entitled Bullets And Daffodils, which opens at The New Wimbledon Studio Theatre on June 9.