Rupert Brooke - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In the film The Pleasure of His Company, Fred Astaire, acting as Biddeford 'Pogo' Poole, mentions that he is going to visit Brooke's grave on the Greek island of Skyros.

• The Memorial Arch at the Royal Military College of Canada designed by John M. Lyle, whose two large bronze tablets bear the names of the ex-cadets who gave their lives for their country in World War I, includes the quotation "Blow out your bugles over the rich dead. There's none of these so lonely and poor of old but dying has made us rarer gifts than gold."

• This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, opens with the quotation "Well this side of Paradise!… There's little comfort in the wise. — Rupert Brooke"

• The title of An Unofficial Rose by Iris Murdoch, is taken from Brooke's The Old Vicarage, Granchester.

• Travel writer Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) gathered material, including an interview with Brooke's mother, for an eventual biography of Brooke, but completion of the task fell to Arthur Springer whose Red Wine of Youth—A Life of Rupert Brooke, benefitting from Halliburton's researches, appeared in 1952. According to Gerry Max, Horizon Chasers--The Lives and Adventures of Richard Halliburton and Paul Mooney, Halliburton's message to seek one's destiny abroad, and to embrace romantic enterprises, drew its chief inspiration, as did the new cult of youth emerging after World War I, from poet Rupert Brooke. "He died in a foreign land, young and full of promise; his life was the stuff from which beautiful dreams are made." Max notes that Brooke was himself a most accomplished travel writer, bringing to life, with an original cast of mind, all the places he visited, as his Letters From America fully demonstrates.

• Brooke's poem "A Channel Passage", with its vivid description of seasickness, is used for comic effect in a third-season episode, "Springtime", of the television series M*A*S*H. Corporal Radar O'Reilly reads the poem to a nurse he hopes to impress, with surprising results. Radar pronounces the poet's name as "Ruptured Brooke".

• Part of Brooke's poem "Dust" is used as the lyric for a song by the same title, composed by Danny Kirwan and recorded by Fleetwood Mac on their 1972 album Bare Trees. Brooke is not credited on the album.

• On Pink Floyd's war-themed album The Final Cut, the song "The Gunner's Dream" contains the lyrics "in the space between the heavens and the corner of some foreign field."

• Portions of Brooke's poem "The Hill" appear at the beginning of the video for the Pet Shop Boys song "Se a vida é (That's the way life is)".

• In the episode Major Star of the British sitcom Blackadder, Captain Blackadder parodies the poem "The Soldier", warning George 'If I should die, think only this of me, 'I'll be back to get you!'

• Brooke's poetry is used as character and plot device in the 1981 movie Making Love and the child ultimately born to the character Claire Elliott, played by Kate Jackson, is named after him.

• The 1997 mystery novel Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie contains numerous allusions to and quotations from Brooke.

• The 2009 novel The Great Lover, by Jill Dawson, is based on Brooke's life and mixes fact with fiction. The title is taken from one of Brooke's poems of the same name.

• The 2011 novel "The Stranger's Child" by Booker prize winning British novelist Alan Hollinghurst features fictional War Poet Cecil Valance who shares characteristics of, though is not as talented as, Brooke. Brooke is also referenced, second-hand, in the narrative.