Poet
Rupert Brooke
Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic WWI sonnets. Before the war, Brooke won a scholarship to study at Kings College, Cambridge where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles and was President of the Cambridge University Fabian Society. In 1915, The Times Literary Supplement quoted two of Brooke’s five sonnets, and following this, ‘V: The Solider’, was read from the pulpit of St Paul’s Cathedral on East Sunday. His most famous collection of poetry was published in May 1915 and by June 1918 had reached its 24th impression. Due to the success of his poetry, just after his 27th Birthday, Brooke was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a temporary Sub-Lieutenant. He sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 28 February 1915, however, an infected mosquito bite developed into Sepsis and he died on a French hospital ship off the Greek island of Skyros. W.B. Yeats described Brooke as, “The handsomest young man in England”.