Robert Graves was born in 1895 in Wimbledon, London, into a family where literature was simply part of everyday life. His father, Alfred Perceval Graves, was a notable Irish poet and a key figure in the Gaelic cultural revival, which meant Robert grew up immersed in myth, verse, and a deep appreciation for the old stories. That Celtic influence stayed with him throughout his life.
He attended Charterhouse School and soon after, enlisted in the First World War. Serving as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, he was severely wounded at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, to the point where he was reported dead. Though he survived, the war left him with deep scars that echoed in his poetry for years — an ongoing focus on violence, survival, and the complex guilt of returning home.
“After the war, Graves enrolled at Oxford and began to carve out a literary career.”
His friendship with American poet Laura Riding became pivotal in his life. They spent over a decade living and working together, co-managing a small press and challenging each other's poetic ideas. When their relationship came to an end, Graves moved to the island of Majorca, Spain, where he would spend most of his remaining years.
He is likely best known to casual readers for his prose: the autobiographical memoir *Goodbye to All That* (1929), which offers one of the sharpest insights into the true experience of the First World War, and the historical novels *I, Claudius* and *Claudius the God* (1934), which reimagined ancient Rome with a novelist's keen eye for power and betrayal. However, Graves always saw himself primarily as a poet, producing a vast body of verse over seven decades.
