Amid the sleepless nights of constant explosion and gunfire, the little office at 6 Lansdowne Terrace seemed to hold intact everything that was great or beautiful about human life. As the streetlamps flickered out and lights were obscured behind brown-paper screens, a subdued atmosphere took hold of London in 1939. Cloistered in pubs and gloomy sitting rooms, London’s young writers and artists faced being sent to the front, trading their paintbrushes and pens for the weapons of war. In this book, Will Loxley conjures up this brooding world and tells the story of the defiant magazine Horizon, which sprung up against the odds. Interweaving the personal histories of the magazine’s leaders – Cyril Connolly, George Orwell and the poets Dylan Thomas and Stephen Spender – with their poetry, prose and letters, Will brings us into these writers’ homes and into the shabby offices at 6 Lansdowne Terrace.

Author Will Loxley Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson ISBN 9781474615709 EAN 9781474615709 Bic Code Cover Hardback