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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Rupert Brooke
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(1887–1915) Poet whose charm and brilliance, together with his early death in World War I, made him a symbol of gilded Edwardian youth and its tragic fate. His fame as a poet was firmly established with the five 'war sonnets', published in 1915. They included The Soldier, which in its romantic patriotism was very different from the later mood of Wilfred *Owen but which tragically prefigured the poet's own death later that same year: If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England.
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The foreign field turned out to be on the Greek island of Skyros, where Brooke was buried after dying of blood poisoning while serving in the navy. Among his other well-known poems are the nostalgic The Old Vicarage, Grantchester ('Stands the church clock at ten to three?/ And is there honey still for tea?') and the fanciful fish's-eye view of paradise in Heaven.
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