THE HUMAN RACE chooses its own icons. Which members will be put on a pedestal is decided by popular opinion alone. The status cannot be bought, nor decided upon by governing bodies.

James Dean made a handful of films, where others have made dozens, yet he remains the cult figure of films. Marilyn Monroe could never be considered a great actress, yet her name is still on everyone’s lips many years after her death. Many artists from the rock and roll era are no longer with us, but as an influential icon, John Lennon still stands head and shoulders above the others. Oscar Wilde wrote only a few plays, one novel and some poetry, before being carted unceremoniously off to jail, and yet people still argue over a century later as to the colour of the grapes that Lord Alfred Douglas insisted Oscar buy him.

So what are the ingredients? A tragic death – a young death, vulnerability, rebelliousness, an enigmatic persona, an unfulfilled life, an undefinable charisma, and identification with a large enough group of people who regard their icon as a touchstone. Invariably and somewhat implausibly, the powerful feeling for these people fails to diminish with time, each generation keeping the flame alive and maintaining the spirit of the person they cherish.

Rupert Brooke had only one small book of poems published in his lifetime, and yet his image and everything he was meant to have stood for is as alive in the late 1990s as it was in the Edwardian and Georgian periods. In spite of suffering periods of bubble-bursting iconoclasm, the ‘Young Apollo’ of the First World War will not lie down.

Many poets have lived a full, rich, long life, with their output spanning forty, fifty, sixty years or more, yet Brooke’s name shines more brightly and his image looms larger than most.

Following his death in 1915 at the age of twenty-seven on the way to Gallipoli, his Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Ian Hamilton, reflected on why Brooke seemed special:

So who was Rupert Brooke, and why does his likeness and poetry still affect millions a hundred years after his death? This was the quest I set myself when I decided that I would track down and experience at first hand the places that influenced this extraordinary young man to write his poetry and letters, and the areas that he loved. My travels took me to the banks of the Teign, Eden, Beaulieu, Ouse and Granta rivers, to Dartmoor, the depths of the New Forest, the very tip of the Lizard, and the hills of Surrey. My wanderings also took in the picturesque villages of Penshurst, East Knoyle, Market Lavington and Bucklers Hard, and the seaside towns of Eastbourne, Hastings, Bournemouth, Sidmouth and Clevedon. I journeyed south to Rye on the East Sussex coast, north to Moffat in Scotland, east to Cley-next-to-the-Sea and west to Cornwall and the Welsh coast. The dozens of other places visited included Rugby, Brooke’s birthplace and home, and Cambridge, where he attended King’s College.

Everywhere, I met with interest, information and a fascination for a man that all but three had never met, and those only as young children. Many people were eager to know more about his life, and were surprised at his links with certain areas of the country.

Living in a media-conscious age, we have become used to people claiming relationships with the rich and famous who are no longer with us, although the phenomenon is clearly not new. I talked to many women who knew someone who had been engaged to, or had a serious affair with Brooke. When both parties are dead, it’s foolish to speculate, so I’ve let them lie, until any details arise which might in future substantiate the claims.

For several days in the summer of 1994 I stayed in Brooke’s old room at the Orchard, Grantchester and, without wishing to appear mawkish, or appeal to the cloyingly sentimental, one feels that the spirit of Brooke and his friends might just be here. ‘Here’, being the small corner of England that encompasses the Orchard, the Old Vicarage and the stretch of the Granta that runs past them.

In writing this book, I was fortunate enough to become acquainted with three people who had met Rupert Brooke, albeit they were very young at the time. Winifred Kinsman was Brooke’s cousin, who recalled him chasing her around the garden as a little girl. Winifred was a delightful lady who told me many tales and opened the Rupert Brooke Museum at Grantchester for us in 1999. Peter Ward was the son of Brooke’s great friend Dudley Ward and was also an excellent host. It was Peter who brought down old boxes from the attic in which I found the trail of letters that led to the discovery that Brooke had fathered a child. Peter also gave me artefacts for the Brooke Museum. Patricia Aldington, the sister of Richard Aldington, met Brooke briefly as a young child when he visited the family at the Mermaid in Rye. In April 2015, the British Plaque Trust will be erecting a Blue Plaque on Orchard House, Grantchester, where Brooke lived, loved, wrote and entertained his friends.