Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of 'I, Claudius' who was also one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. Robert Graves (1895 -1985) placed his poetry far above his prose. He once declared that from the age of 15 poetry had been his ruling passion and that he lived his life according to poetic principles, writing in prose only to pay the bills and that he bred the pedigree dogs of his prose to feed the cats of his poetry. Yet it’s for his prose that he’s most famous today, including 'I Claudius', his brilliant account of the debauchery of Imperial Rome, and 'Goodbye to All That', the unforgettable memoir of his early life including the time during the First World War when he was so badly wounded at the Somme that The Times listed him as dead. With Paul O’Prey Emeritus Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Roehampton, London Fran Brearton Professor of Modern Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast And Bob Davis Professor of Religious and Cultural Education at the University of Glasgow Producer: Simon Tillotson Robert Graves (ed. Paul O'Prey), In Broken Images: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1914-1946 (Hutchinson, 1982) Robert Graves (ed. Paul O'Prey), Between Moon and Moon: Selected letters of Robert Graves 1946-1972 (Hutchinson, 1984) Robert Graves (ed. Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward), The Complete Poems (Penguin Modern Classics, 2003) Robert Graves, I, Claudius (republished by Penguin, 2006) Robert Graves, King Jesus (republished by Penguin, 2011) Robert Graves, The White Goddess (republished by Faber, 1999) Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (republished by Penguin, 2017) Robert Graves (ed. Michael Longley), Selected Poems (Faber, 2013) Robert Graves (ed. Fran Brearton, intro. Andrew Motion), Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography: The Original Edition (first published 1929; Penguin Classics, 2014) William Graves, Wild Olives: Life in Majorca with Robert Graves (Pimlico, 2001) Richard Perceval Graves, Robert Graves: The Assault Heroic, 1895-1926 (Macmillan, 1986, vol. 1 of the biography) Richard Perceval Graves, Robert Graves: The Years with Laura, 1926-1940 (Viking, 1990, vol. 2 of the biography) Richard Perceval Graves, Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1940-1985 (Orion, 1995, vol. 3 of the biography) Miranda Seymour: Robert Graves: Life on the Edge (Henry Holt & Co, 1995) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
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Robert Graves, 1895-1985, was one of the finest poets of the 20th century.
He was to declare that from the age of 15 poetry had been his ruling passion and that he lived his life according to poetic principles, writing in prose only to pay the bills.
Yet it is for his prose that he is most famous today, including I Claudius, his brilliant account of the debauchery of imperial Rome, and Goodbye to all that, the unforgettable memoir of his early life in which he was so badly wounded at the Somme that the Times listed him as dead.
We need to discuss Robert Graves are Paula Pray, Emeritus professor of Modern Literature at the University of Hampton, London Fran Brereton, professor of Modern Poetry at Queen's University Belfast and Bob Davis, professor of Religious and Cultural Education at the University of Glasgow.
Bob Graves was born in Wimbledon in South West London.
Can you tell us something about his life as a child?
Well, Robert's born in 1895 into a family that instantly has a kind of wow factor when you cross over the threshold of that Wimbledon home.
That's both the Gravese descent and the von Ranks.
His father, Alfred percival graves, is 49 when Robert is born, and Robert is a child of his second large family, as he's a widower who has remarried.
The grave's lineage is a distinguished pedigree of Anglo Irish bishops, clergy, medical people, lawyers, men and women of letters.
And Alfred Percival himself is a significant member.
Alfred is a strong advocate and supporter of the Gaelic revival in Ireland.
He is a strong supporter of Celtic studies as it's emerging and a popularizer of these ideas in ways that his son would later come to question, a popularizer of these through popular song and tavern lyrics and recorded music.
The other side of the family is Amy von Rank, who comes from the very distinguished lineage of the von Rank family in Germany, the chief representative of which is Leopold von Rank, the founder of the modern historical method and someone who bequeaths to this family a strong interest in the past in conducting historical studies with documentary history, accuracy, sources and so on.
And I would say that both of these traditions, the Irish imaginative tradition and the Germanic scholarly tradition, feed into Robert's life immediately.