Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar.

He studied at St Paul's School, London and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1891.

Moved by the casualties of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914, Binyon wrote his most famous work "For the Fallen", which is often recited at Remembrance Sunday services in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa.

Around then, he played a crucial role in the formation of Modernism in London by introducing young Imagist poets such as Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D.

During those years, Binyon belonged to a circle of artists, as a regular patron of the Vienna Café in Oxford Street.

His fellow intellectuals there were Ezra Pound, Sir William Rothenstein, Walter Sickert, Charles Ricketts, Lucien Pissarro and Edmund Dulac.

Others named included Thomas Hardy, John Masefield and Rudyard Kipling, with the post going to Robert Bridges.

Three of Binyon's poems, including "For the Fallen", were set by Sir Edward Elgar in his last major orchestra/choral work, The Spirit of England.

He wrote about his experiences in For Dauntless France (1918) and his poems, "Fetching the Wounded" and "The Distant Guns", were inspired by his hospital service in Arc-en-Barrois.

Other Great War poets heard on the CD include Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, David Jones and Edgell Rickword.

His work on ancient Japanese and Chinese cultures offered strongly-contextualised examples that inspired, among others, the poets Ezra Pound and W. B. Yeats.

In May 1939, he gave the prestigious Romanes Lecture in Oxford on Art and Freedom, and in 1940, he was appointed the Byron Professor of English Literature at University of Athens.

Between 1933 and 1943, Binyon published his acclaimed translation[11] of Dante's Divine Comedy in an English version of terza rima, made with some editorial assistance from Ezra Pound.

During the Second World War, Binyon continued to write poetry including a long poem about the London Blitz, "The Burning of the Leaves", which is regarded by many as his masterpiece.

Helen Binyon (1904–1979) studied with Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious, illustrating many books for the Oxford University Press, and was also a marionettist.

[17] In 1915 Cyril Rootham set "For the Fallen" for chorus and orchestra, first performed in 1919 by the Cambridge University Musical Society conducted by the composer.

Edward Elgar set to music three of Binyon's poems ("The Fourth of August", "To Women", and "For the Fallen", published within the collection "The Winnowing Fan") as The Spirit of England, Op.