Poetry and pretence: the phoney Native American who fooled Bloomsbury set

A new book reveals how the Canadian war poet Frank Prewett deceived his lover Siegfried Sassoon and the literary elite

He hoodwinked his lover Siegfried Sassoon into believing he was a Native American and convinced Virginia Woolf he would be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

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He appeals to the primitivist ideas of everyone around him. He goes around topless on a horse, looking gorgeous and fulfilling all their fantasies of being an indigenous person

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