Robert Graves

Robert Graves’ first marriage was to Nancy Nicholson, the daughter of the painter William Nicholson. The marriage produced four children. He fell in love with another woman, the poet Laura Riding, and left Nancy for her.

Robert Graves and Laura lived and worked together for many years before splitting up. Their break-up was as volatile as their relationship had been.

He then began a relationship with Beryl Hodge, the wife of fellow writer Alan Hodge and established a home with her in 1946. Their relationship, which eventually led to marriage, produced four more children.

Robert von Ranke Graves was born on 24 July 1895 in Wimbledon, Surrey, England into a middle-class family. His parents were Alfred Perceval Graves, an Anglo-Irish poet, songwriter and folklorist, and his second wife Amalie von Ranke. He had four siblings.

As a young boy he attended a series of six preparatory schools including King's College School in Wimbledon, Penrallt in Wales, Hillbrow School in Rugby, Rokeby School in Kingston upon Thames and Copthorne in Sussex.

He won a scholarship to the prestigious Charterhouse in 1909 where he began writing poetry. He also excelled at boxing and became the school champion at both welterweight and middleweight. During his final year at Charterhouse, he won a classical exhibition to St John's College, Oxford. However, the World War I started before he could join the college.

Immediately upon the outbreak of the World War I in 1914, Robert Graves enlisted and received a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. His first volume of poems, ‘Over the Brazier’, was published in 1916 and he soon gained a reputation of being a war poet.

While fighting at the Battle of the Somme, he was badly wounded by a shell-fragment. His injuries were so severe that he was expected to die and was officially reported as having died of wounds. However he survived though his health remained delicate. His army career came to an end in 1918, but he continued to be troubled by his war experiences for years to come.

Robert Graves joined the University of Oxford in 1919 and changed his course to English Language and Literature, though managing to retain his Classics exhibition. During this time he became acquainted with several prominent personalities, the most notable of them was T. E. Lawrence, then a Fellow of All Souls', with whom he discussed contemporary poetry.

He took up a post at Cairo University in 1926. This period marked a very tumultuous phase in his personal life and he separated from his wife and moved in with the poet Laura Riding in Deià, Majorca. The couple then founded a literary journal ‘Epilogue’, and wrote two academic books, ‘A Survey of Modernist Poetry’ (1927) and ‘A Pamphlet Against Anthologies’ (1928).

In the late 1920s, he also published ‘Lawrence and the Arabs’ (1927), a commercially successful biography of T. E. Lawrence and autobiography ‘Good-bye to All That’ (1929) which cemented his status as a reputed author.

One of Robert Graves’ best known works is the war memoir ‘Good-Bye to All That’ in which he wrote about his life as a British army officer in the World War I. The book explores the themes of the inadequacies of patriotism, the rise of atheism, feminism, socialism and pacifism, among others.

His historical novel ‘I, Claudius’, was chosen by ‘Time’ as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to present in 2005. Written in the form of an autobiography of the Roman Emperor Claudius, it includes history of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and Roman Empire.