Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

‘Litter, glass, black soft dust’

A scattergun study of wartime writers
by
March 2022, no. 440

Writing in the Dark: Bloomsbury, the Blitz and Horizon Magazine by Will Loxley

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $32.99 pb, 399 pp

‘Litter, glass, black soft dust’

A scattergun study of wartime writers
by
March 2022, no. 440

In late March 1941, more than six months into the relentless German aerial campaign that was then destroying great swaths of London’s fabric and spirit, Virginia Woolf filled the pockets of her heavy overcoat with stones and waded into the River Ouse. Her suicide occurs halfway through Will Loxley’s scattergun study of English writers and writing during the war, though its inevitability haunts the first half of the book, as claustrophobic as the pea-soupers that had defined London’s self-image in the centuries before the Blitz took on that singular responsibility.

Paul Kildea reviews 'Writing in the Dark: Bloomsbury, the Blitz and Horizon Magazine' by Will Loxley

Writing in the Dark: Bloomsbury, the Blitz and Horizon Magazine

by Will Loxley

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $32.99 pb, 399 pp

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.