The bombs of the Second World War wrought terrible destruction on London, but they were also a ‘love-charm’ for the city’s inhabitants. Freed from the responsibilities of normal life, many Londoners succumbed to the thrill of wartime passion.
In her extraordinary work – part history, part biography and part literary criticism – Lara Feigel describes the Second World War as experienced by five of the best writers of the day: Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel and Henry Green. She shows that these years of bleakness were also a time of romantic excitement and literary achievement. All reviews here.
Dr Lara Feigel is a lecturer in English and the Medical Humanities at King’s College London, where her research is centred on the 1930s and the Second World War. Selina Hastings is an award-winning biographer, whose subjects include Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh, Rosamund Lehmann and Somerset Maugham.
