World War I (1914-1918)
The more you read about the First World War, the more you realize that the centuries meet there. The career of nation-states, the legacies of imperialism, the entanglement of colonialism, the pace of technological development, the gamemanship of ways of doing battle dating back to the Roman Empire, and the irresistable rise of 20th Century powers all collide in a four-year war.
Here I stock a mix of traditional histories, fiction, and other ways of telling the story that echoes into our present day.
The Poems of Rupert Brooke
The Poems of Rupert Brooke
The poetry of Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) remains memorable for its charming lyrical quality and the way in which his sonnets perfectly recapture the mood of England at the start of World War I. This volume reprints his complete oeuvre, from the early lyric poems to those written shortly before his premature death: "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester," "Tiare Tahiti," "The Great Lover," "The Dead," "The Soldier," and many others.
Brooke enlisted in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the war in 1914 and entered the literary scene early the following year, when two of his sonnets ("The Dead" and "The Soldier") appeared in London's Times Literary Supplement.The 27-year-old poet died shortly afterward aboard a ship bound for Gallipoli. His 1914 and Other Poems was published immediately afterward to wide acclaim. Brooke remains among Britain's best-loved cultural figures, and his works evoke the tranquility of prewar life and the ideals of heroic self-sacrifice.
Reprint of The Complete Poems of Rupert Brooke, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1936.