Bloomsbury Poetry Classics are selections from the work of some of our greatest poets. The series is aimed at the general reader rather than the specialist and carries no critical or explanatory apparatus. This can be found elsewhere. In the series the poems introduce themselves, on an uncluttered page and in a format that is both attractive and convenient. The selections have been made by the distinguished poet, critic and biographer Ian Hamilton. When Rupert Brooke died in April 1915, aged 28, he was hailed as a national war hero. But Brooke did not die in battle (he was in truth felled by a mosquito bite) but this detail was not allowed to obstruct the launching of his legend. For recruiting purposes, he was an Apollo, golden haired who had willingly sacrificed himself for King and country. At Rugby and at Cambridge, Brooke had been famed as both athlete and aesthete. Few knew about the dark complications of his love-life, or about the mental breakdown that caused him to flee to the South Seas in 1912. Had Brooke lived to experience active service, he may well have wished to revise certain lines of his most celebrated verses.