Rupert Brooke was born on 3 August 1887. After leaving Cambridge University, where he became good friends with many of those in the 'Bloomsbury Group', Brooke studied in Germany and travelled in Italy. In 1909 he moved to the village of Grantchester, near Cambridge, which he celebrated in his poem, 'The Old Vicarage, Grantchester' (1912). He was commissioned into the Royal Naval Division and took part in the disastrous Antwerp expedition in October 1914. Brooke managed to catch the optimism of the opening months of the war within his wartime poems, which expressed an idealism about war that contrasts strongly with poetry published later in the conflict.
