Rupert Brooke: Poems

In popular culture

  • Frederick Septimus Kelly wrote his "Elegy, In Memoriam Rupert Brooke for harp and strings" after attending Brooke's death and funeral. He also took Brooke's notebooks containing important late poems for safekeeping and later returned them to England.[43]
  • Brooke was an inspiration to John Gillespie Magee Jr., who attended Rugby a generation later and won the same poetry prize as his predecessor. Magee is best known for his poems "High Flight" and "Sonnet to Rupert Brooke".
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), opens with the quotation "Well this side of Paradise!... There's little comfort in the wise. — Rupert Brooke".[44] Brooke is also referenced in other parts of the book.
  • Dutch composer Marjo Tal set several of Brooke's poems to music.
  • Charles Ives set to music a portion of Brooke's poem "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" in his 114 Songs published in 1921.
  • A saying by Brooke was mentioned in Princess Elizabeth's Act of Dedication speech on her 21st birthday in 1947: "Let us say with Rupert Brooke, now God be thanked who has matched us with this hour."
  • The opening two stanzas of his poem "Dust" were set to music by the pop group Fleetwood Mac and appear on their 1972 album Bare Trees.
  • In a 1974 episode of the TV series M*A*S*H, "Springtime", Cpl. Klinger reads from a book of Brooke's poems, which he won in a poker game. Later, Radar uses the book to try to seduce a nurse, mispronouncing the author's name as "Ruptured Brook".
  • "Is There Honey Still for Tea?" is the third episode of the eighth series of Dad's Army, 1975
  • Brooke is a prominent figure in the movie "Making Love", 1982. His poetry is cited as being a favourite of the lead characters and a child is named after him in the epilogue.
  • In the fourth and final episode of the 2003 BBC series Cambridge Spies, British-Soviet spy Kim Philby recites the final line from Brooke's "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" along with his then wife, Aileen Furse.
  • The novel The Stranger's Child (2011) by Alan Hollinghurst features fictional war poet Cecil Valance, who shares characteristics of, though is not as talented as, Brooke.[45]
  • Brooke is a minor character in A. S. Byatt's novel The Children's Book (2009).
  • "Lithuania", a drama in one act, by Rupert Brooke was made into feature films in India. The productions were Aa Karaala Ratri (2018), in Kannada, and Kondraal Paavam (2023) in Tamil.

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