Good-bye to All That is the autobiography of Robert Graves.[1] First published in 1929, the work is a landmark anti-war memoir of life in the trenches during World War I. The title expresses Graves' disillusionment in the existence of traditional, stable values in European and English society. Graves first wrote the work in his thirties, when he had a long and eventful life ahead of him, and the book deals mainly with his childhood, youth and military service.
He devotes a large part of the book to his experiences of the First World War, where he gives a detailed description of trench warfare, including the tragic incompetence of the Battle of Loos. Many readers will be interested in his secondhand description of the killing of German prisoners of war by British, Canadian and Australian troops. Although he had not witnessed any incidents himself and knew of no large-scale massacres, he knew of a number of incidents where prisoners had been killed individually or in small groups, and he believed that a large proportion of Germans who surrendered never made it to prisoner-of-war camps.
Although this is an abridged version, it still spends ample time describing the horrible experiences of upper-class British schoolboys, who were taken from their families at a young age and sent to public schools, where conditions were brutal and the only escape was romantic relationships with other boys. This was encouraged by the headmasters, as long as it did not become too physical. As a glimpse into upper-class British life, it makes it clear how brittle it was: relationships with women, especially sexual relationships, were mostly formal.
As a visitor to England in the Seventies, I was amazed at the amount of homosexuality. According to Graves, most of this homosexuality was learned, not innate.
