Synopsis
Strikingly handsome, charming, and gifted, the English poet Rupert Brooke was the embodiment of a generation that was all but destroyed between 1914 and 1918. In Forever England, Brooke's exceptional body of work emerges dramatically from a colorful and tangled life. 256 pp 6 x 9 80 b/w photos
Reviews
"I am twenty-six years old [today]," Brooke wrote to a girlfriend, "And I've done so little." It was August 3, 1913, a year and a day before England would enter WWI. A young Apollo to his generation, Brooke would have only one more birthday, dying of septicemia en route to Gallipoli. His Byronic personality and looks, and his early death, gave his thin literary achievement a sentimental appeal that overshadowed that of more substantial wartime poets. Read's 22nd book (he is also an English broadcaster and composer) cannot replace Christopher Hassell's 1964 life, the standard work before it went out of print. Read exposes a brief Tahitian romance that resulted in an unacknowledged child, but otherwise this biography is inadequately researched, repetitious and padded with local history and irrelevant asides. Its wooden prose includes such sentences as this: "He eventually would live there, but that was in the future." Seventy-one of Brooke's poems appear, mostly in full; among them is the famous "The Solider," which prophesies his burial in "some corner of a foreign field"Ait would be the Greek island of SkyrosAthat would become "forever England." Illustrations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Brooke died of septicemia at the age of 28 during World War I but is still remembered as one of England's "war poets," a writer recognized for his physical attractiveness as well as his talent. This biography allows Brooke to speak for himself through the inclusion of poems and other writings. The work also provides a well-rounded picture of prewar England, providing detailed background to various persons and places alluded to in the texts. Noteworthy is evidence that Brooke had a daughter by a Tahitian woman with whom he fell in love during his travels. The final chapter, on reactions to the poet's death, suggests adulation similar to that expressed for Princess Diana, another beautiful, promising Briton who died prematurely. Read, the author of 22 books and a musician, songwriter, creator of stage musicals, and British radio personality, has written a musical about Brooke as well as a film version of Forever England. His new work is recommended for both public and academic libraries.ADenise J. Stankovics, Rockville P.L., CT
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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