Robert Graves (1895-1985) was an English poet and novelist. Born in London he was the middle of five children. As a teenager he took up boxing and poetry, and won a scholarship to Oxford University, his interest being in Celtic and Irish mythology. He didn’t take his place to study at University, enlisting immediately after the First World War broke out. He was badly affected by his war experiences, and his physical and psychological health was undermined.

After the War, Graves took up his place at University. He had married his first wife, Nancy, and had four children by her, but in 1926 they split in highly emotional circumstances, and he lived with the poet Laura Riding. Theirs was a volatile relationship and they finally parted. He married his second wife, Beryl Hodge, with whom he remained till his death.

Graves was half German, which caused some tension for him during the two world wars. Nevertheless, he enlisted as a soldier in 1914, and his first book of poetry – consisting of war poems – was published in 1916. He was one of the first poets to write realistically about soldiers’ conditions. He was good friends with Siegfried Sassoon, with whom he shared criticism of the conduct of the War.

Siegfried Sassoon

He is probably most famous for his novels ‘I, Claudius’ and ‘Claudius the God’, which portrayed the violent and scandalous behaviour of the Roman emperors, and was dramatized as a highly successful television series in the 1970s. He had a long career in which he published more than 140 books: collections of poems, translations of Greek and Roman myths, and novels.