In 2000 the British Library unsealed a cache of letters and a memoir documenting the previously unknown love affair between the stellar young poet Rupert Brooke and artist Phyllis Gardner. Their story of love, conflict, and loss—set against the backdrop of gathering war clouds—offers fascinating insight into life in Britain on the eve of World War I, as well as into the character of Brooke, still revered as a great war poet and a literary voice silenced far too soon. It also uncovers the all but forgotten life story of Gardner, best remembered today for her book on Irish wolfhounds.

"[Gardner] emerges as a hugely likeable and spirited woman who, for all her willfully over-generous misreading of Brooke's motives, was never a pushover."—Daily Mail (London)