Goodbye To All That: Popular Penguins

Robert Graves was born in 1895 in Wimbledon. His father was the Irish writer Perceval Graves and his mother was Amalia Von Ranke. He went from school to the First World War, where he became a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.

After the war, apart from a year as Professor of English Literature at Cairo University in 1926, he earned his living by writing. His historical novels include:

• I, Claudius
• Claudius the God
• Count Belisarius
• Wife of Mr Milton
• Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth
• Proceed, Sergeant Lamb
• The Golden Fleece
• They Hanged My Saintly Billy
• The Isles of Unwisdom

He wrote his autobiography, Goodbye to All That, in 1929. The Times Literary Supplement acclaimed it as ‘one of the most candid self portraits of a poet, warts and all, ever painted’, as well as being of exceptional value as a war document.

Two of his most discussed non-fiction works are The White Goddess, which presents a new view of the poetic impulse, and The Nazarine Gospel Restored (with Joshua Podro), a re-examination of primitive Christianity.

He also translated Apuleius, Lucan and Suetonius. His The Greek Myths was the first modern dictionary of Greek Mythology. His translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (with Omar Ali-Shah) is also notable.

He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1961 and made an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, in 1971.

Robert Graves died on 7 December 1985 in Majorca, his home since 1929. On his death The Times wrote of him, ‘He will be remembered for his achievements as a prose stylist, historical novelist and memorist, but above all as the great paradigm of the dedicated poet, ‘the greatest love poet in English since Donne’.’

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