Snake

A brooding, reclusive poet with a vicious, precise sting.

Sassoon was intensely introverted and fiercely meticulous about his craft, channelling the horrors of World War I into sharply cutting, darkly satirical verse that recoiled from sentimentality. Despite his brief public acts of defiance — most notably his 1917 anti-war statement 'Finished with the War' — he shunned celebrity and retreated into solitary, obsessive literary work for much of his life. His biting wit and outsider status, combined with a deeply private nature and a body of work that struck with sudden, lethal precision, make him a quintessential snake.