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Rupert Brooke

 

Rupert Brooke was both a soldier and a poet who wrote one of his most famous poems the Soldier when he was stationed at Blandford Camp during World War I. Then something of a celebrity, he was known for his boyish good looks and was once described as the ‘handsomest young man in England.’

He was also a friend of Winston Churchill and the then Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. At Blandford Camp, Rupert Brooke was a member of the Hood Battalion of the Royal Naval Division.

‘The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me

That there’s a corner of a foreign field

That is forever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed,

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.’

His poetry has frequently been criticised for its unrealistic, romanticised and idealistic view of war.

Rupert Brooke died of septicaemia on 23rd April 1915 from an infected mosquito bite on his way to the Gallipoli Campaign, a conflict which turned out to be something of a disaster. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros located in the Aegean Sea.

(Illustration: Rupert Brooke)



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