Patrick Shaw-Stewart was a brilliant Eton College and Oxford scholar of the Edwardian era who died on active service in the First World War.
He took almost every major academic prize of his time first at Eton and later at Balliol College. Elected to a fellowship of All Souls, he instead committed his career to Barings Bank, where he was appointed one of the youngest managing director in the great banks history, in 1913. At this time he became devoted to Lady Diana Manners and became a leading member of her "corrupt coterie," known simply as The Coterie. When war was declared in 1914, he joined the Royal Navy and, serving with Rupert Brooke, played a prominent role in the famed young poet's funeral in Greece. Winning promotion to Lieutenant Commander, he was killed in December 1917.
His fame today stems from one of his poems, today one of the most well-remembered of the 'war poems' of the First World War, which begins:
I saw a man this morning Who did not wish to die I ask, and cannot answer, If otherwise wish I.
