Author Graham McKechnie on the remarkable life of Frederick Kelly

From T E Lawrence to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and British Prime Ministers Herbert Asquith and Clement Attlee to name but a few, Oxford has given the country more than its fair share of important figures from the First World War.

Statesmen, military leaders, soldiers, sailors, poets – Oxford men dominate virtually every conceivable field. But few men were as unusual, brilliant and likeable as Frederick Septimus Kelly, whose diaries we have recently been able to publish.

Australia likes to try to claim Kelly as one of its own, for it was there he was born. But make no mistake; Kelly’s story is rooted here. He studied at Balliol College, where he excelled not at academia but in the fields of music and rowing, and he spent many of his happiest days on the Thames around Henley and at his rowing club, Leander.

I first came across the story of Frederick Kelly while making a documentary for BBC Radio Oxford ahead of the 2012 Olympics. The basics of his story were remarkable in themselves – he was a brilliant rower, excelling as a sculler at Henley Royal Regatta, appearing in the 1903 Oxford Boat Race crew and then to cap it all, winning a gold medal at the 1908 London Olympics in the eight.

Kelly was also a concert pianist and a composer, yet it was his diaries that brought the story to life, giving us an insight into the man behind the story, opening up his world, his observations and his thoughts 100 years on.

What we found was a most unusual man. Kelly was an artist who refused to allow his spirit to be crushed by the horrors he witnessed around him, both in Gallipoli and on the Western Front. His close friends, a vibrant and exceptionally talented group, which included the poet Rupert Brooke, were being picked off one by one over the course of the war.

Music was Kelly’s refuge. Brooke’s death gave him the inspiration to write his greatest piece of music, his Elegy for Strings, In Memoriam Rupert Brooke which soars above anything else he composed. Astonishingly, this ethereal piece was largely penned in the trenches of Gallipoli. Even on the Somme, surrounded by unimaginable tragedy and horror, Kelly carried musical scores with him and regularly found time to compose.

It was his escape, but it was also his salvation. Given command of the military band of the Royal Naval Division of which he was part, Kelly stuck two fingers up to the modern, mechanised war raging around him by staging Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture in a wood not far from the front, using the roar of real British artillery as the piece reaches its tumultuous climax. And there is never a more poignant example of the clash of art and reality than Kelly’s attempt to lure a German soldier over to the British lines by singing Wagner to him over no man’s land.

War diaries can be ominous documents and the shadow of tragedy hangs over Kelly’s words. But he is also fun, amusing and waspish, writing with great lucidity. Loved by his friends, he could also be highly strung, remote and harsh on the men who served under him. His eccentricity also comes through: brushing his teeth dozens of times a day to the annoyance of his batman; collecting cats and kittens in the trenches and carrying them around in sandbags.

The jarring suddenness with which his diary ends, with a blank entry on ‘12 November 1916’ never fails to shock – as does hearing the unfinished piano sonata they found in his pack. He was shot leading an attack on a machine-gun post during the final act of the Somme.

Kelly’s War, The Great War Diary 1914-16 is out now (Blink Publishing). £18.99.