Well known writer, neo-romantic poet and soldier, and often cited as being the 'most handsome' man in England (all quite subjective of course!), I visited the house where he stayed for a while as an Undergraduate at Cambridge University (King's College). Now the house in Grantchester belongs to Lord and Lady Archer and they very kindly paid to have a memorial statue raised to the young poet who died during the Great War in 1915.
Rupert was born on 3 August 1887. His father was a housemaster at the famous Puclic school, Rugby. After leaving Cambridge University, where he became friends with many of those in the 'Bloomsbury Group'(such as Virginia Woolf), Brooke studied in Germany and travelled in Italy. In 1909 he moved to the village of Grantchester, near Cambridge, which he celebrated in his poem, 'The Old Vicarage, Grantchester' (1912). His first collection of poems was published in 1911. In 1913, Brooke became a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, his old college.
In the same year, he left England to travel in North America, New Zealand and the Pacific islands. He returned home shortly before the outbreak of World War One. He was commissioned into the Royal Naval Division and took part in the disastrous Antwerp expedition in October 1914. In February 1915, he set sail for the Dardanelles. On board ship he developed septicaemia from a mosquito bite. He died on 23 April 1915 on a hospital ship off the Greek island of Skyros and was buried in an olive grove on the island.
Rupert Brooke caught the optimism of the opening months of the war with his wartime poems, published after his death, which expressed an idealism about war that contrasts strongly with poetry published later in the conflict.
