On the 23rd of this month it will one hundred years since Rupert Brooke died.  Fitting perhaps that ‘The Second I saw you:The true love story of Rupert’ Brooke and Phyllis Gardner’  by Lorna C Beckett is being published by the British Library to mark the occasion.

I am fortunate to have a collector’s item of a beautiful book of his works published 1915 by Sidgwick and Jackson. The pages are so thick they are almost cardboard in texture and smell wonderful…but are no where near as wonderful as his beautiful poems. It includes an amazing photograph of him taken in 1913 and protected by a (somewhat now brown in colour) piece of tissue-paper. How fortunate am I?

I have stumbled across two equally beautiful publications of his over the years, the first went to a boyfriend who was a hopeless romantic….

The Busy Heart -‘Now that we’ve done our best and worst, and parted, I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.’ Rupert  Brooke© 

and the second to a minister friend who continues to be a great mentor to me.

The Soldier ‘If I should die, think only this of me; That there’s some corner of a foreign field. That is for ever England.’  Rupert  Brooke© .

This book….I would run to save in a fire.