# Thornton Tyrrell — Memoirs of an Infantry Officer character guide

> Thornton Tyrrell in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Tyrrell

**First appearance:** 0000-i-at-the-army-school

## Snapshot

A quietly radical officer who reads Kropotkin between duties, Tyrrell urges the narrator to turn private disillusionment into a public statement against the War.

## Who they are

Tyrrell moves through the narrator's wartime world as a fellow officer whose convictions run deeper than mess-table grumbling. He presses Sherston to write a protest he can circulate, offering encouragement that feels both bracing and unnerving, and his faith in independent thinking becomes a mirror in which the narrator measures his own courage. Without Tyrrell's prodding, the book's central moral crisis might never have found its voice.

## Relationships

### [Mr. Markington](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/characters/mr_markington)

_professional_

Mr. Markington and Thornton Tyrrell have a professional relationship, likely as colleagues or in a business/military capacity.

### [Mr. Markington](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/characters/mr_markington)

_professional_

Mr. Markington and Thornton Tyrrell have a professional relationship, likely as colleagues or in a business/military capacity.

### [Mr. Markington](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/characters/mr_markington)

_professional_

Mr. Markington and Thornton Tyrrell have a professional relationship, likely as colleagues or in a business/military capacity.

## In the story

### [I](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/chapters/i)

An eminent mathematician, philosopher, and physicist recommended by Markington as the best man for the narrator to consult about his protest.

### [II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/chapters/ii)

The philosopher who encourages the narrator's independent thinking and offers to help with his protest statement.

### [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/chapters/iii)

Helps Sherston refine his protest statement and introduces him to anti-war circles.

### [IV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/chapters/iv)

Author of the lectures on political philosophy that the narrator studies, though they prove too advanced.

### [VI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/chapters/vi)

Sherston hopes to talk with him in London but finds he is out of town.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/characters/thornton_tyrrell
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/characters