About the Author

Andrew Sinclair (born 1935) was a novelist, historian, critic and film-maker. He was a founding member of Churchill College, Cambridge.

From his rich, varied and extensive bibliography, Faber Finds reissued his first two novels, The Breaking of Bumbo and My Friend Judas, both published in 1959, his history of Prohibition in America, Prohibition: The Era of Excess and his cultural history of Britain in the 1940s, War Like a Wasp: The Lost Decade of the Forties.

Reviews

Individuals wanting to immerse themselves in Fitzrovia and the British arts scene of the Forties can pick up this book. Relying heavily on quotation to create an air of authenticity, it moves quickly from theme to theme, and the result is a better understanding of a largely ignored decade, its cross-fertilization among the arts, its ethos (alienation), and its forms (short pieces and sketchwork prevailing). The atmosphere here is the message. However, the book does little to attract the general reader and demands a lot of patience. Names are thrown around with dizzying speed (page 120, selected at random, names 11 different individuals); they are sometimes made something of, and sometimes not. The well-knowns and the who-knows are jumbled together as they probably were in the pubs. Meanwhile, there may not be enough sustained argument to attract subject specialists. In sum, very interesting, but not essential.--Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.

A Cambridge don and distinguished novelist, Sinclair refutes with this rich book the argument that England was artistically barren during the wartime 1940s. His elegant commentaries include lengthy selections from the ``lost decade,'' works of creativity truly remarkable, particularly in a blitz-shocked country. Here are the words of T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and other poets; Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Evelyn Waugh, Robert Graves and many others. Representing the visual arts are color and black-and-white illustrations of paintings as well as photos that reveal the British character, bending neither to Hitler nor the long years of deprivation. Also included are reminders of such film classics as Noel Coward's Brief Encounter, further evidence of the era's innovations. The book is a literary treasure and a perfect way to settle disputes with nay-sayers. (June)