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Secret memoir uncovers the real life and loves of doomed war poet Rupert Brooke

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On the centenary of the his death, a cache of love letters brings the elusive golden boy of Edwardian England into focus

On 23 April a bundle of neglected love letters and a devastating, secret memoir, released by the British Library after almost a century, will open a window on to one of the enduring mysteries of 20th-century English literature: the life and loves of the first world war poet Rupert Brooke.

Throughout his short career, the precocious author of The Soldier was an elfin figure of fascination, once described by WB Yeats as “the handsomest young man in England”. In our own time, Brooke has become the haunting symbol of a doomed generation, flitting across the pages of novels by Alan Hollinghurst and AS Byatt like a volatile and irreverent Peter Pan. Androgynous in fact and fiction, his true character has been tantalisingly elusive.

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