Product Description

Robert Graves' superb autobiography tells the story of his life at public school and as a young officer during the First World War. 'It is a permanently valuable work of literary art, and indispensable for the historian either of the First World War or of modern English poetry ... Apart, however, from its expetional value as a war document, this book has also the interest of being one of the most candid self-portraits of a poet, warts and all, ever painted. Thesketches of friends lof Mr Graves, like T.E. Lawrence, are beautifully vivid' Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13641 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Born in 1895, Robert Graves went straight from school to the First World War, where he became a captain. A poet at heart, he also wrote several historical novels which include I, Claudius and Claudius the God - GOODBYE TO ALL THAT was written in 1929 and rapidly established itself as a modern classic. He translated Apuleius, Lucan and Suetonius for the Penguin Classics, and complied The Greek Myths. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1961. He died at his home in Majorca in 1929.

Customer Reviews

Triste la Guerre
This highly dramatic (not wonderful) autobiography covers the first thirty years of the author's life, which were heavily marked by religion, public school and World War I.

Education, religion
Robert Graves was educated in a patriarchal system where he learned `to masquerade as a gentleman'.
The religion of his youth left him with lifelong psychological scars: `religion developed in me a great capacity for fear - I was perpetually tortured by the fear of hell - a superstitious conscience, and a sexual embarrassment.'

Public school
For him, public school was `a fundamental evil' with very few decent schoolmasters, while nearly all the time was spent at Latin and Greek. R. Graves felt painfully `the oppression of the spirit, like sitting in a chilly cellar'. Writing literature (poems) was considered as a strong proof of insanity.
He was permanently bullied, until he took boxing lessons. He also didn't like the gay atmosphere where `boys used each other as convenient sex-instruments.'

The WW I massacre
The war experience left him shell-shocked.
The average life expectancy of an infantry subaltern was at some stages of the war only about three months. Morale became so low that an officer had to shoot a man from his company `to get the rest out of the trench.'
All the soldiers wanted, was to be wounded and to be set free to leave this horrible war: `A bullet in his neck. I was delighted. David should now be away long enough to escape perhaps even the rest of the war. Then came the news that David was dead.'
The intellectual community understood perfectly what was happening: `We no longer saw the war as one between trade-rivals: its continuance seemed merely a sacrifice of the idealistic younger generation to the stupidity and self-protective alarm of the elder.'

Together with Henri Barbusse's `Under Fire', Robert Graves`s autobiography constitutes a truly realistic report on the senseless slaughtering of innocent youngsters during WW I. It stands in sharp contrast to the works on the same subject by the German author Ernst Jünger who used his huge literary talent to glorify (!) war and his war experience.
Robert Graves wrote an intensely emotional and bitter book which is a must read for all those interested in the history of WW I and of mankind.

Brilliant and contradictory
A very useful story and full of insights. Graves is very matter of fact about the most horrific aspects of the war - summary executions, soldiers wanting to kill their officers, officers who shot one of their own soldiers to persuade the others to leave the trench and attack, alcoholic officers who sent hundreds to their deaths, accidental deaths and deaths from our own sides guns. In a very detached style, we see all the horror involved.

He explains the strict hierarchy of society and of the army at the time. Yet, although he is obviously disillusioned with the war, he speaks as an old soldier, who believes in discipline, who cannot help but feeling that Britain is justified. Si whil he explains that those sections of the army who were undisciplined and 'slack' would tend not to be put in the most dangerous positions, and had much more chance therefore of surviving the war, he does not see these sections as the most intelligent, but as somehow "not playing the game". Contradictory, but brilliant.

Surprisingly unputdownable.
When I decided to read this book, I did so with trepidation. Previously, I had read All Quiet on The Western Front and Farewell to Arms and, even though I wanted to learn more about The First World War, I was worried about the diary format of Goodbye to All That.

I was, of course, more than pleasantly surprised. Robert Graves is lucid and engaging through-out. Even in the beginning, when he recalls his education at Harrow, I found it fascinating and was hooked. Robert Graves has a wonderful way of writing, whereby it's as if he's only having a casual conversation. In fact, all the way through, Graves employs this friendly method of communication, even when he's discussing his time in the trenches. Naturally, there are more than a few harrowing occasions when the author conveys his dispair, especially towards the end, where Graves becomes increasingly disillusioned with the war, but, even so, the engaging dialogue abides.

The book is highly interesting for several reasons. Firstly, and most prominently, there is much insight into the then-life of an officer, such as the antiquated hierarchy system, and trench war-fare, the old gas masks, the fun the officers had behind the lines, and the military tribunal system. And there is much more on that besides. There is also much about Robert Graves' family and his upbringing.

I enjoyed the book particularly for it descriptions of Siegfried Sassoon and his and Graves' friendship. Having such an intimate description of so emminent a poet is invaluable, and adds real depth to any of Sassoon's work you might read afterward.

Goodbye to All That is a great book. It is well crafted, and intriguing, and, more than anything, it is an important work of military literature.