A grim winter’s day in Cambridge. Even the beautiful colleges seemed to hunker down against the rain, like cattle bunching under the hawthorn lee. Coming across a half-open door, we pushed it and found ourselves in a chapel. At the back, a table offered poems by students killed in the First World War. One poem, by 21-year-old Henry L. Simpson, lit the dark place like a flare. He wrote that though everything passes away, “the birds’ song never ends”.