Daisy Dunn
Changing of the Guard
Writing in the Dark: Bloomsbury, the Blitz and Horizon Magazine
By Will Loxley
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 400pp £20
Virginia Woolf likened the sound of bombs falling in the war to ‘the sawing of a branch overhead’. At Rodmell in East Sussex, in Bloomsbury, Bow and beyond, the air scintillated with the aftermath of explosions or floated ‘thick as Hell’ above the trees. Lamplighters – ‘the silent brigade of the gloaming, like folkloric guardians of dreams’, as Will Loxley describes them – extinguished every last flicker on the streets below, leaving those brave enough to remain out after dusk as vulnerable to hazards on the ground as to what fell from the sky. ‘All the gossip is of traffic casualties,’ wrote Evelyn Waugh in his diary in October 1939. ‘Cyril Connolly’s mistress lamed for life and Cyril obliged to return to his wife.’
Connolly, at that time courting Diana Witherby, was preparing to push against the darkness, as well as the precept of his friend Logan Pearsall Smith that there were ‘three illusions’ everyone experienced: ‘falling in love, starting a magazine and thinking they could make money out of keeping chickens’. As the bookshops emptied, publishers postponed the release of new titles, T S Eliot wound up The Criterion and the final copies of London Mercury rolled off the press, Connolly’s Horizon arrived to illuminate ‘young writers-at-arms’.
Among those to step into its light was Stephen Spender, one of the lead figures of Loxley’s first book, which centres on a circle of writers who defied the blackouts and bombs to launch themselves on literary London during the Second World War. Horizon, which is less central to the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘In matters of the heart, cats are at the heart of the matter.’
So says @OSoden on the explosion of cat mania in the early twentieth century.
Oliver Soden - Pussies Galore
Oliver Soden: Pussies Galore - Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes
literaryreview.co.uk
A recent inquiry found that British security services had effectively licensed the IRA assassin known as Stakeknife to commit multiple murders.
@malodoherty picks apart the murky world of spying and counterespionage in Northern Ireland.
Malachi O’Doherty - Belfast Confidential
Malachi O’Doherty: Belfast Confidential - Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Espionage, Murder and Justice ...
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Creative non-fiction, I am so sick of this bullshit’, says Michael Anderson, an editor of the New York Times Book Review.
@rosalyster returns to its genesis.
Rosa Lyster - Two Sides to the Story
Rosa Lyster: Two Sides to the Story - The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble Rousers, O...
literaryreview.co.uk