'I would rather have been in London under siege between 1940 and
1945 than anywhere else,' John Lehmann said, 'except perhaps Troy
in the time that Homer celebrated.' Paradoxically perhaps the 1940s
was a decade of cultural efflorescence. Writing, painting, theatre,
cinema and dancing all thrived: Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, T. S.
Eliot, George Orwell and Laurence Olivier all produced some of
their best work in this period. In this sweeping and important
book, Andrew Sinclair recreates the world of the 1940s with its
encounters and characters, its conflicts and its discoveries, its
hopes and its disillusions. It was a world of pubs and clubs, where
scarce drink could be found and the war forgot. It was the time of
the short piece, the poem, the story and the sketch. Anyone who
knew anyone in the loose coterie of Fitzrovia could have anything
published. Everything printed was read by a nation avid for
learning and waiting for action. War Like a Wasp recreates a
feverish and democratic time using the words of the period. In his
original and witty account of the decade, Andrew Sinclair has made
sure nobody will ever think of the 1940s in the same way again.
'Soho and the disease writers caught there, Sohoitis, are the main
enthusiasm of War Like a Wasp. They make Sinclair's book a keen
Remembrance of Times Pissed - Dylan Thomas brawling, brawling,
getting the DTs, Dan Davin slugging or about to be slugged, the
unsubsidised editor Tambimuttu (known to some as Tuttifrutti)
cadging drinks and poems, louche painters clustered about Nina
Hamnett's dying Parisian flame, huge Anna Wickham biting people in
the head, all the rough traders, brief encounters and lost girls.'
Valentine Cunningham, the Observer 'He has a talent for creating
memorable phrases. He calls Dylan Thomas 'the poet with lips like
Michelin tyres'. He describes the aftermath of a bombing raid in
prose that is uncommonly vivid. He makes you see and smell the
terrible damage.' Michael Sheldon, Washington Post
General
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