Rupert Brooke A Biography

by Christopher Hassall

Book by Hassall, Christopher

Genres: Biography, World War I

557 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Christopher Vernon Hassall (24 March 1912 – 25 April 1963) was an English actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist and poet, who found his greatest fame in a memorable musical partnership with the actor and composer Ivor Novello after working together in the same touring company.

Reviews

[April Munday · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very long biography for a man who only lived 27 years, 8 months and a few days. Over a hundred years after his death, people are still more interested in his looks and his lovers than they are in his poetry. For them this book will be of little use. Apart from one chapter, the biography is about the poet and not the lover.

Brooke's letters are quoted at length, but there are no letters to him, which makes him seem a little self-obsessed. He was probably doing no more than responding to things said or written to him.

It takes almost a hundred pages to get him from Rugby, where his father was a housemaster, to Cambridge. It's almost another hundred pages before he gets to Grantchester. That still leaves more than three hundred pages for the last, busy, six years of his life.

Overall it presents a rather scrubbed-clean version of Brooke's life and tends towards dullness.