Friends and Apostles

by Keith Hale

The correspondence between the poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) and his friend James Strachey, later the primary English translator of the works of Sigmund Freud, appears in print here for the first time. As well as their shared interest in politics, literature, art and theatre, the letters deal often and explicitly with the subject of homosexuality and with the sometimes scandalous activities of many of their close circle. Brooke and Strachey compare observations of fellow members of the exclusive Cambridge 'Apostles' (which included James' brother Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Bertrand Russell), of mutual 'Bloomsbury' friends (such as Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and George Mallory) and of such fellow Fabian Socialists as Hugh Dalton and Beatrice Webb. The correspondence provides important new biographical, psychological and cultural insights into Rupert Brooke and his poetry, and reveals the complexities of the man behind the heroic legend that