Edward Tennant (poet)

For other people named Edward Tennant, see Edward Tennant (disambiguation).

Lt. Edward Wyndham Tennant (1 July 1897 – 22 September 1916) was an English war poet, killed at the Battle of the Somme.

He was the son of Edward Tennant, who became Lord Glenconner in 1911, and Pamela Wyndham, a writer, Lady Glenconner and later wife of Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon. His younger brothers were the eccentric, Stephen Tennant, and David Tennant, the founder of the Gargoyle Club.

He was educated at Winchester College, which he left aged 17. He joined the Grenadier Guards.

He was known to friends and family as Bim. It is unknown where this nickname derives from. It has been suggested that he was engaged at one point to Nancy Cunard. That this is untrue has been confirmed by two reliable sources: Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner, who responded to this question by letter, and Lois Gordon, Nancy Cunard's biographer, who, in her extensive research, never came across any hint of such an alliance.

Bim Tennant is buried in France at Guillemont Road Communal Cemetery close to his friend Raymond Asquith who was killed the week before.

Works

• Verses by A Child (private printing, 1909)
• Worple Flit and other poems (printed posthumously, 1916)

References

• Edward Wyndham Tennant: A Memoir (1919) Pamela Glenconner
• Bim. A tribute to the honorable Edward Wyndham Tennant, Lieutenant, 4th Battalion Grenadier Guards 1897-1916 (1990) Anne Powell

External links

• http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSsp=46614733&GRid=12251516&
• Edward Wyndham Tennant - A Memoir by his mother Pamela Glenconner at OpenLibrary.org. With a photo of E. W. Tennant on page 171.