Ivor Gurney

The English poet and song composer Ivor Gurney was born in Gloucester on 28 August 1890. He studied at London's Royal College of Music with Stanford and Vaughan Williams, and began a career which was cut short due to ill health. Whilst serving in the first World War he was gassed, and this probably caused the swift decline in his mental health, leading to his early death in an asylum at Dartford, Kent on 26 December 1937.