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Rupert Brooke

1961 , Grantchester (Cambridgeshire)

Cat no. 212883

An profile of the life and times of Rupert Brooke, poet and World War One casualty, who lived for many years at Grantchester in Cambridgeshire.

The film begins with the opening lines of Brooke's best known work, 'The Soldier', from a sequence of sonnets entitled '1914'. Written in a 'stuffy German cafe', these lines reveal Brooke's longing for the natural beauty of his Cambridgeshire home. Another recitation follows, a poem dedicated to that home in Grantchester, the Old Vicarage. Little has changed at the Old Vicarage since Brooke wrote those words half a century earlier, and little has changed in Grantchester either. The reporter speaks to Dr Graham Hough, a local resident, about Rupert Brooke's connections with the village, where a war memorial is inscribed with a dedication to Brooke's 'men with splendid hearts'. At The Orchard, Brooke's first home in Grantchester, its proprietor - Mr Wells - talks about the small tourism industry that has sprung up from the Brooke connection. From The Orchard, Mr Wells sells books of Rupert Brooke poetry and displays photographs of the poet, with visitors coming from around the world to drink tea in the shady gardens that once hosted Brooke and his friends. The film concludes with a discussion of Brooke's early death from blood poisoning during the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, which is said to have 'given him the eternal youth of a poetic Peter Pan'. In death, he is presented as the 'personification of his generation - young Englishmen who went to war with a song, yet died in their thousands'.

Featured Buildings

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester; The Orchard, Grantchester

Keywords

Poetry; Poets; Literature; World War I

Manifestations

Rupert Brooke

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