"If I should die", wrote Rupert Brooke, in his poem, The Soldier, "think only this of me:

"That there's some corner of a foreign field
"That is for ever England".

The poet did not take into account the inland revenue, the agency which above all can bring the most romantic down to earth.

Papers released yesterday at the public record office show how the revenue, noticing the popularity of Brooke's poems after he died in the first world war, decided to look again at the taxes he had paid.

The family's solicitors asked for permission to wind up the estate in 1916, the year after the poet died of blood poisoning abord a naval ship off Greece.

The revenue promptly wrote back noticing that "no mention appears to have been made in the original affidavit or in the present account of the deceased's copyrights and royalties".

The solicitor replied: "There was no value as regards any such assets at the time of the deceased's death.

"We have seen Mrs Parker Brooke, mother of the deceased, and she confirms ... that the copyrights and royalties in existence on her son's death were of no value".

The only book published at his death was a "small volume published in 1911 [called, simply, Poems] and that no profits accrued to the deceased in respect of these nor has she received any."

Brooke's publishers, Sidgwick and Jackson, confirmed "the profit was so trifling that the copyright cannot hardly be said to have any value at the time of his death".

The publishers added: "It is not too much to say that all the pecuniary value of his poetry arose in the first instance out of the circumstances of his death and therefore at the time of his death was non-existent."

The correspondence continued until 1925, 10 years after the poet's death. The revenue finally agreed the "sum of £3 3s 0d for duty".

By then the family had had enough, its solicitor telling the inland revenue it would cost more to reclaim the sum.

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