[2][3] He died of septicaemia following a mosquito bite whilst aboard a French hospital ship moored off the island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea.

While travelling in Europe, he prepared a thesis, entitled "John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama", which earned him a fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, in March 1913.

[17] Brooke's paranoia that Lytton Strachey had schemed to destroy his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see Henry Lamb precipitated his break with his Bloomsbury group friends and played a part in his nervous collapse and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.

[21] Brooke was romantically involved with the artist Phyllis Gardner and the actress Cathleen Nesbitt, and was once engaged to Noël Olivier, whom he met, when she was aged 15, at the progressive Bedales School.

Brooke's accomplished poetry gained many enthusiasts and followers, and he was taken up by Edward Marsh, who brought him to the attention of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty.

[23] Brooke came to public attention as a war poet early the following year, when The Times Literary Supplement published two sonnets ("IV: The Dead" and "V: The Soldier") on 11 March; the latter was then read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April).

Brooke sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 28 February 1915, but developed severe gastroenteritis whilst stationed in Egypt followed by streptococcal sepsis from an infected mosquito bite.

At 4 o’clock he became weaker, and at 4.46 he died, with the sun shining all round his cabin, and the cool sea breeze blowing through the door and the shaded windows.

No one could have wished for a quieter or a calmer end than in that lovely bay, shielded by the mountains and fragrant with sage and thyme.Another friend and war poet, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, assisted at his hurried funeral.

[27] His grave remains there still, with a monument erected by his friend Stanley Casson,[28] poet and archaeologist, who, in 1921, published Rupert Brooke and Skyros, a "quiet essay", illustrated with woodcuts by Phyllis Gardner.

[36] In 1988, the sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones was commissioned to produce a statue of Brooke at Regent Place, a small triangular open space, in his birth town of Rugby, Warwickshire.

[37][38] A 2006 portrait statue of Rupert Brooke in army uniform by Paul Day stands in the front garden of The Old Vicarage, Grantchester.

In 2023, artist Stephen Hopper painted a portrait in oils celebrating Brooke's life and featuring references to his grave on Skyros and his service with the Hood Battalion, part of the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division.

In the afterword of his Collected Poems (1919), Lord Alfred Douglas wrote: "... never before in the history of English literature has poetry sunk so low.

When a nation ... can seriously lash itself into enthusiasm over the puerile crudities (when they are nothing worse) of a Rupert Brooke, it simply means that poetry is despised and dishonoured and that sane criticism is dead or moribund.

[43][page needed] Brooke's poems have been set to music by groups and individuals including Charles Ives, Marjo Tal and Fleetwood Mac.