Robert Graves

Robert Graves was a British poet, soldier, novelist and classical scholar. His experience on the Western Front shaped his memoir Goodbye to All That and much of his poetry, while later historical novels such as I, Claudius brought ancient Rome to a broad modern readership.

Robert Graves was born in Wimbledon and died in Deià. Graves served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and was badly wounded on the Somme; after the war he built a long literary career in poetry, criticism, mythography and historical fiction, much of it written from his home on Majorca.

In Pat Barker’s Regeneration, Robert Graves, Arthur John Brock and other historical figures share the narrative with invented patients and civilians, while Rivers’s humane methods are contrasted with Lewis Yealland’s coercive electrical treatment of enlisted men.