"You are incredibly beautiful when you are naked and your wonderful hair is blowing about you. Fire runs through me, to think of it, you devil. I remember every inch of you lying there in
that strange light."
A member of the generation of poets who both memorialized and fell victim to the first world war, Rupert Brooke, in his short life, was often as celebrated for his love affairs and his good
looks (Virginia Woolf bragged about skinny-dipping with him in Cambridge) as for his accomplished poetry. In 2000 the British Library uncovered a cache of letters and a memoir documenting the
previously-unknown love affair between Brooke and Phyllis Gardner, a young art student and, as the letters reveal, the inspiration for Brooke’s most intensely sensual poem, "Beauty and
Beauty." Brooke and Gardner’s story of love, conflict, and loss, expressed in spirited prose, makes these writings a fascinating glimpse into life on the eve of the first world war, as well
as a powerful love story.
The Second I Saw You tells this couple’s story for the first time. It gives a revealing insight into the life and personality of Brooke, still revered for poems such as "The Soldier"
and "A Channel Passage," and uncovers the neglected story of Gardner, whose biography has been almost lost from history. The Second I Saw You tells their story largely in the couple’s
own words, allowing readers to experience this turbulent, passionate affair as directly as possible.
