Rupert Brooke: Life, Death and Myth, by Nigel Jones
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Rupert Brooke: Life, Death and Myth, by Nigel Jones
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A revised edition of the candid, sometimes shocking, biography of Rupert Brooke revealing the very different reality behind the golden-boy façade of an English literary icon Paragon of youthful beauty, romantic symbol of a lost England, and precociously gifted poet, Rupert Chawner Brooke died in a hospital ship off the Aegean island of Skyros in April 1915. The 27-year-old author of the patriotic sonnet "The Soldier" was buried in a grave strewn with olive branches and scented with sage. All England mourned his passing. But behind the glow of myth lies a darker reality. At the height of his promise, a disappointment in love triggered a mental and physical collapse that brought his inner complexities to the surface. Letters reveal a man who was sexually ambivalent, misogynistic, anti-Semitic—and sometimes alarmingly unstable. This revised edition of Nigel Jones’s admired biography, with a new chapter on a previously unknown affair of Brooke's, reveals a more conflicted and troubled individual than the gilded Adonis of English literary myth.
Rupert Brooke: Life, Death and Myth, by Nigel Jones- Amazon Sales Rank: #1308414 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.80" h x 1.90" w x 5.10" l, 1.28 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 624 pages
Review "Intelligent, witty and definitive, this is literary biography at its best." —Andrew Roberts, author, Napoleon: A Life
From the Publisher As well-tended legend has it, Rupert brooke was the quintessential romantic Englishman: handsome, charming, a soldier-poet who died young on his way to the battlefields of World War I. Now, in this immensely readable volume, the myth of thc golden boy of English letters is skillfully dispelled. Deconstructing the carefully crafted image promoted by his friends, this well-documented biography reveals a charismatic but deeply flawed human being--anti-Semitic, rampantly misogynistic, tormented by sexual ambivalence, jealousy, and paranoia. In "Rupert Brooke: Life, Death and Myth," Nigel Jones gives us a clear-eyed, admirably thorough account of one of England's most cherished cultural icons.
About the Author Nigel Jones is the author of Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London. A former editor at History Today and BBC History Magazine, he has appeared on historical documentaries on TV and radio.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful. A fascinating look at a deeply troubled man By teabag Brooke was most famous in his own time for writing what now look like overblown, sentimental poems and--in the run-up to World War II--romanticized patriotic verse. But he was also known in his own time for being, as some had it, the most beautiful man in England. In many ways and for many years he lived a charmed life. He was educated at an excellent school and then in Cambridge University, where he was the lively, charismatic leader of a group of appealing friends who admired him, visited him, protected him, and stripped off and went swimming in the river. (The fact that the rather repressed Virginia Woolf was one of those who did so, and the fact that upper-class women he was attracted to were willing to pose naked for photographs for him, suggests just how appealing he could be.)And when things were going his way, it was a golden life. But Brooke had no capacity for living comfortably if he wasn't the center of all of his friends' lives. Insisting that none of them fall in love or marry but instead remain perpetually in a Peter Pan-like sexless company was doomed to failure, and it simply never seemed to occur to him that the women whose admiration he rejoiced in might come to know him well and determine that he was too demanding, too unwilling to give, and incapable of romancing one woman at a time (while becoming livid with rage if the young ladies found other men).The most beautiful man in England spewed out astonishingly vile abuse when he was crossed in any way; the diatribes and hatefulness in some of his letters is jaw-dropping. What he seemed to want was not communion with another, or even just plain sex; what he wanted was to be adored and write overblown words of praise to one woman while chasing others, and switching back and forth between withering hatred and statements of love in the same paragraph, or indeed the same sentence.Brooke finally seems to be a child who threw tantrums at any point when he could not get his own way. Since his charisma, class, beauty and modest talent opened many doors for him, and he felt that praise and adoration was his due, he had no resources other than slashing others when they loved elsewhere or wouldn't fall in with his plans and the roles he had mapped out for him.He's an unappealing figure, ultimately; a beautiful man, but a narcissist full of hatred who had a tremendous power to hurt others and little capacity to love. What Rupert wanted was everything; others were not supposed to have autonomy. It's a very sad story of a man who burnt his bridges and caused great pain, despite all of his gifts. And it's a tremendously good read; Jones has done strong research and pulls no punches. We get to see a 360 degree view of Rupert Brooke and, by the end, know him far better than he knew himself.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. The handsomest (but most conflicted) young man in England By David Bradford This is a wonderful biography; excellently written, exhaustive, well researched, sympathetic to the subject while telling his story warts and all, intensely interesting and containing a representative sample of Brooke's best poetry. I have been interested in Rupert Brooke since my early teenage years, and have read all the previous biographies as well as his poetry, his published letters, his prose and his travel writing over the intervening years. Anyone familiar with the previous biographies will have recognised that Brooke's was a conflicted character, despite the adulation he received during his life-time and despite, or perhaps partly because of, his famed good looks and his description as 'the handsomest young man in England'. In the year before he enlisted for war, his list of admirers was legion and included Winston Churchill, Asquith the Prime Minister and his daughter Violet as well as Eddie Marsh, Winston Churchill's private secretary. But it has been left to Nigel Jones to clear up the mysteries and to expose the real Rupert Brooke to the cold clear light of day. And the picture he leaves us is of a young man who, behind the charming and beautiful exterior, harboured strongly misogynist, anti-Semitic and homophobic thoughts and feelings. His mental health was unstable and his own ambiguous sexuality seemed to have caused him great internal suffering. It also harmed those closest to him. Woe betide any young woman whom he fancied or with whom he formed a relationship! She was bound to be treated badly and to have her heart broken, often time after time. And he didn't treat his male homosexual friends much better either.One wonders what might have happened to Brooke if he had survived the Great War. Would he have developed into a really great poet? The biographer makes it clear that, apart from the aberration of the popular war sonnets, Brooke had matured greatly as a poet in his last years and that there was clearly the promise of greater things to come. One wonders too if he might have matured as a person and overcome some of his demons, or whether the psychological trauma of that ghastly war might only have exacerbated his already fragile mental health - perhaps the latter is much more likely. Ultimately it may have been best for Brooke, and indeed for some of his long-suffering friends that they were all spared years of further suffering and that blood poisoning granted him the quick and early death that in some ways he seemed to crave.Whatever the case of the person himself, flawed, tragic and confused as he was, it seems certain that the myth of Rupert Brooke, the handsome young soldier poet, who went willingly to die for England in the first year of the Great War will live on for years to come. His memory and the myth surrounding him is assured of receiving a boost in 1915, the centenary of the ANZAC (and indeed the other Allied) landings on Gallipoli, as well as the centenary on 23rd April (the day of Shakespeare and St George) of the poet's own death and his burial on Apollo's own island, Skyros, in the Aegean sea.Interested readers could do no better to celebrate the 2015 centenary than to read Nigel Jones's excellent biography and to ponder anew the life of this essentially sad but beautiful young man.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful. GETTING TO KNOW RUPERT BROOKE By kip An excellent biography of Brooke! I can't imagine anyone picking this up to read and not being engrossed in it. Indeed, I understand there is a revised edition coming out soon, and I intend to buy that and read it as well. Brooke and his circle were incredibly interesting people.
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