Graves grows up the middle child of ten in an upper-middle-class English family with an Irish father and a German mother.

At Charterhouse, Graves drops his German middle name as anti-German sentiment among students makes it a target for bullying.

England declares war and Graves enlists in the army days later, partly to avoid attending Oxford University.

A golf club secretary arranges for Graves to receive a commission as a second-lieutenant with the prestigious Royal Welch Fusiliers.

Graves is assigned to guard thousands of German civilian prisoners at an internment camp in Lancaster.

Graves arrives at the Cambrin trenches in France and completes his first night patrol along the front line.

The English gas attack at La Bassée fails catastrophically when wind blows the gas back onto British troops and the barbed wire remains uncut.

Graves is severely wounded in the groin and hand by German shelling at High Wood during the Somme offensive.

Colonel Crawshay mistakenly writes to Graves's mother reporting his death, while Graves lies unconscious at a field hospital.

After recovering from his wounds, Graves reunites with Sassoon in Harlech, where both men work on their poetry.

Graves works to prevent Sassoon from being court-martialed after Sassoon publishes a public letter condemning the war.

The Armistice is declared and Graves receives his military demobilization with unexpected help from the Cork District Demobilization Officer.

Graves enrolls at Oxford to study English Literature, renting a cottage on Boar's Hill near other poets.

Graves and Nancy open a general shop near Oxford that goes bankrupt and leaves them roughly three hundred pounds in debt.

Nancy's doctor recommends a winter in Egypt and Graves is simultaneously offered a professorship at the Royal Egyptian University in Cairo.

Robert Graves grows up in an upper-middle-class English family and attends the prestigious Charterhouse boarding school, where rising anti-German sentiment forces him to disown his German heritage. He enlists in the Royal Welch Fusiliers at the outbreak of World War I, first guarding German prisoners before joining the fighting in France. His time in the trenches culminates in the catastrophic failed offensive at La Bassée and a near-fatal wounding at High Wood, where he is mistakenly reported dead. After recovering in England alongside fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, Graves navigates the chaos of postwar life, marrying Nancy Nicholson and pursuing his dream of living as a writer. He attends Oxford on an education grant, attempts to run a shop that fails, and ultimately accepts a teaching post in Cairo, where the memoir draws to its close.

The defining events of Robert Graves's life from childhood to Egypt.

Graves is sent to a public fever hospital with scarlet fever, where he first becomes acutely aware of class distinctions.

Graves earns a scholarship to Charterhouse boarding school through his academic performance at the Copthorne preparatory school.

Graves meets Raymond Rodakowski through the Charterhouse Poetry Society and Raymond encourages him to stand up to bullies and take up boxing.

Graves competes in the inter-House boxing competition at Charterhouse, fortified by stolen cherry whiskey, and wins silver cups in two weight classes.

Graves goes rock- and mountain-climbing with schoolmaster George Mallory, often near the family's vacation home in Harlech.

After performing well in a boxing tournament at the Depot, Graves impresses Adjutant Crawshay, who agrees to send him to France.

Graves's sentry Beaumont, the first soldier he spoke with in the trenches on his opening night, is killed by a German bomb at Béthune.

Graves and Robertson deliberately take a leisurely fifty-four-hour journey to join the Second Battalion at Laventie, missing their first train on purpose.

Graves receives a press-cutting revealing that Dick, his Charterhouse romantic interest, has been charged with soliciting a Canadian corporal.

During wartime leave in London, Graves attends his last church service ever on Good Friday at his father's insistence.

After seeing the last dead man in France, Graves collapses with bronchitis and is sent back to the Red Cross Hospital in Rouen.

Graves marries Nancy Nicholson in a small ceremony, with Nancy muttering her vows and changing into work clothes at the reception.

On Armistice night, Graves walks alone along the marshes of Rhuddlan, cursing and sobbing for the dead.

Graves receives his bachelor's degree from Oxford after submitting an unconventional book-length thesis on the illogical element in English poetry.

Graves mistakes King Fuad of Egypt for the Grand Chamberlain and speaks to him in French at a formal royal reception.

This pool traces the smaller yet significant events that shaped Robert Graves's character and his path through World War I. From his earliest brush with class consciousness during a childhood illness, to his boxing victories at Charterhouse and his mountain-climbing friendship with the gifted George Mallory, these events reveal the young man who would go on to serve in France. In the trenches, Graves witnesses the death of Beaumont, the first soldier he befriended, and later receives devastating news about his school romance, Dick. The postwar events in this pool—his last church service ever, a solitary Armistice night walk, an unconventional Oxford thesis, and a comically mistaken encounter with an Egyptian king—capture the wry, sardonic tone that defines the memoir throughout.

The formative experiences and lesser-known moments shaping Graves's story.

Graves submits a poem to the Charterhouse school magazine, earns an invitation to the Poetry Society, and begins writing seriously.

Graves's once-strong faith in the Church of England fades after his confirmation ceremony passes without any spiritual experience.

Graves falls in love with a younger Charterhouse student called Dick and later confronts the choirmaster who secretly kissed Dick on a choir trip.

At a Charterhouse debate, Graves votes against compulsory military service, one of only six dissenters, most of whom will die in the war.

Lightning strikes the phone line during Graves's Lancaster posting, leaving him unable to use a telephone without sweating and stammering for years.

On his first morning in the Cambrin trenches, Graves discovers a soldier in a machine-gun shelter who died by suicide the previous night.

The Adjutant remarks that no officers have been killed in a month, and that same night Thomas, Richardson, and Pritchard all die.

Graves undergoes a nose operation and misses the First Battalion's Somme offensive, during which sixty percent of his fellow officers are killed.

Graves receives a letter from Sassoon consisting of a single newspaper clipping containing Sassoon's public statement denouncing the war as unjust and evil.

Temporarily commanding the Battalion, Graves argues at a Commanding Officers' Conference that a proposed attack is impossible, and the Brigadier cancels it.

After the war, under Nancy's feminist influence, Graves comes to identify as a socialist and participates in Labour Party local politics.

Graves and Nancy spontaneously take a bicycle trip, riding at night and sleeping by day, and end up visiting novelist Thomas Hardy.

Graves reads graphic war poems about gassed soldiers and corpses at a village War Memorial service, severing friendly relations with the local gentry.

During World War II, Graves learns that his son David has been killed in combat in Myanmar.

Upon rereading his memoir, Graves concludes he would not have done anything differently, crediting his Protestant upbringing and rebellious poetic nature.

This pool charts the pivotal moments of inner transformation throughout Robert Graves's life, beginning with his discovery of poetry at Charterhouse and the slow collapse of his religious faith. His vote against compulsory military service and his complicated love for Dick hint at the rebellious instincts that will define his adult life. The revelations of trench warfare—encountering suicide on his first morning, watching close friends die on a single night, and narrowly missing a decimating offensive—push Graves steadily toward his breaking point. His decision to save Sassoon from court-martial, his postwar embrace of socialism, and his refusal to sanitize the war in a public memorial reading mark his final break from the values of his upbringing. The pool closes with Graves's stoic acceptance of personal loss and his ultimate conviction that he would not have lived his life any differently.

The discoveries, decisions, and emotional shifts that changed everything for Graves.

Robert Graves

Autobiography / Memoir

Nonfiction

Guide