Of all the First World War poets, Rupert Brooke is the least appreciated for his true qualities and is the most maligned. A bisexual atheist with socialist tendencies, Brooke was not the naive Adonis of Edwardian England whom secondary school teachers are so keen to adumbrate in their students’ minds. He was an enthusiastic Germanophile, a scholar of European culture who refused to despise an ephemeral enemy. His wartime image of a patriotic soldier-poet was reinforced by the fervour of the day, but his brief and unique position in the history of English verse warrants regular reappraisal so as to occlude those invalid criticisms that are constantly levelled against him.