The Love-Charm of Bombs

by Lara Feigel

  Sarton, May, A World of Light (New York: Norton, 1988)

  Scammell, Michael, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (New York: Random House, 2009)

  Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, In a Cold Crater: Cultural and Intellectual Life in Berlin, 1945–1948, trans. Kelly Barry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)

  Schramm, Ingrid and Hansel, Michael, Hilde Spiel und der literarische Salon (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2011)

  Schramm, Ingrid and Neunzig, Hans A., eds, Hilde Spiel: Weltbürgerin der Literatur (Wien: Zsolnay, 1999)

  Sherry, Norman, The Life of Graham Greene, vols 1–3 (London: Pimlico, 2004–5)

  Shirer, William, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (London: The Folio Society, 1995)

  Spender, Stephen, European Witness (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1946)

  — New Selected Journals, ed. Lara Feigel and John Sutherland (London: Faber, 2012)

  — World Within World, introduction by John Bayley (New York: Modern Library Classics, 2001)

  Spiel, Hilde, Anna und Anna (Wien: Kremayr & Scheriau, 1989)

  — Der Mann mit der Pelerine und andere Geschichten (West Germany: Gustav Lübbe Verlag, 1985)

  — Die Früchte des Wohlstands (München: Nymphenburger, 1981)

  — Kleine Schritte: Berichte und Geschichten (München: Heinrich Ellermann, 1976)

  — Return to Vienna, trans. Christine Shuttleworth (Riverside, California: Ariadne Press, 2011)

  — The Dark and the Bright: Memoirs 1911–1989, trans. Christine Shuttleworth (Riverside, California: Ariadne Press, 2007)

  — The Darkened Room (English translation of Lisas Zimmer) (London: Methuen, 1961)

  Stallworthy, Jon, Louis MacNeice (London: Faber, 1995)

  Strachey, John, Post D, Some Experiences of an Air Raid Warden (London: Gollancz, 1941)

  Sutherland, John, Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography (London: Penguin, 2005)

  Tabachnick, Stephen E., Fiercer than Tigers: The Life and Works of Rex Warner (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002)

  Treglown, Jeremy, Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green (London: Faber, 2000)

  Wallington, Neil, Firemen at War (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1981)

  Wasson, Sara, Urban Gothic of the Second World War: Dark London (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

  Waugh, Evelyn, Officers and Gentlemen (London: Chapman & Hall, 1955)

  — The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Michael Davie (London: Phoenix, 2009)

  — The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (London: Phoenix, 2010)

  — The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, ed. Charlotte Mosley (London: Sceptre, 1997)

  Wheal, Elizabeth-Anne and Pope, Stephen (eds), The Macmillan Dictionary of the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1989)

  Wills, Clair, That Neutral Island (London: Faber, 2008)

  Woolf, Virginia, The Diary of Virginia Woolf , vols 1–5, ed. Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth, 1977–1984)

  — The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vols 1– 5, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanna Trautmann (London: Hogarth Press, 1975–1980)

  Wydenbruck, Nora, Rilke: Man and Poet; A Biographical Study (London: John Lehmann, 1949)

  Yeats, W. B., Collected Poems (London: Vintage, 2009)

  Acknowledgements

  Writing this book has been one of the most enjoyable enterprises I have ever undertaken. This is in part thanks to the five writers whose lives I have been immersed in, and in part thanks to the enthusiasm and generosity of friends, family and colleagues, and of all the people whom the book has brought me into contact with along the way.

  Thanks goes first to Alex Harris, over whose kitchen table the idea for the book was born, and to Juliet Gardiner and Hannah Mulder, who both helped sustain my faith in the book in its early stages, and in whose company and cottages much of the book has been written. Alex and Juliet have also been generous readers of the manuscript, as have Lisa Appignanesi and Richard Overy, with whom I have engaged in several years of oddly enjoyable discussions about Second World War bombing.

  Many colleagues and students at King’s have been supportive friends. Clare Brant and Max Saunders have given Life Writing a home in the English department and me a home in the Centre for Life-Writing Research without which I don’t think I would have had the courage to write this kind of book. It is thanks to the inspiration of Neil Vickers that so much of Ireland has found its way into the book. Hannah Crawforth provided happy companionship during our shared months of maternity leave and book finishing. Ellie Bass, Nicola von Bodman-Hensler, Susie Christensen and Natasha Periyan made the final stages of writing into an enjoyable (and energetic) holiday. And Ellie dug out microfilms for me in the British Library while I was buried in Norfolk and clambered through an exceptionally dusty attic searching for Greene letters, while Nicola helped with many of the German translations and references.

  I am extremely indebted to the other biographers of my subjects, both for their work and for their generosity in welcoming me into the field. I am especially grateful to William Cash, who not only shared his Greene material with me but allowed me to write part of the book in his beautiful gatehouse, as well as making possible a trip to Achill. Sarah LeFanu and Martin Ferguson Smith have been generous in sharing photographs, sources and archival adventures. Jeremy Treglown has been extremely encouraging throughout the project. I am also indebted to the biographers I do not know personally, especially to Victoria Glendinning and Norman Sherry. The children of Hilde Spiel and Henry Yorke have all been very supportive of my endeavours. Christine Shuttleworth and Felix de Mendelssohn have been munificent in sharing anecdotes, manuscripts and photographs; Sebastian Yorke has been welcoming and helpful, despite some scepticism about the value of biography; Alice Kadel and John House have both been very kind in allowing me access to their parents’ archives.

  Researching the book has taken me on several archival trips and I am grateful for the grants that made these possible and the friends who made them fun. Mark Turner and Jan Palmowski enabled a research grant from King’s College London which funded the trips to America, Vienna and Munich. The Heinrich Böll Foundation funded the trip to Achill. My stay in Austin was made possible by the hospitality of Inga and Richard Markovits. These trips have been turned into holidays by the friends who accompanied and hosted me: Marcel Feigel and Justin Williams in Vienna; Rebecca Welsford, Robert Newell, Vike Plock, Jason Hall and Hannah Crawforth in America; Mary Fairclough and Michelle Kelly in York; Kate Arthur in Cambridge; William Peacock, Julia Schoen and Eveline Kilian in Berlin; and Nicola von Bodman-Hensler in Munich. And I am happily indebted to the staff in numerous archives but especially at the Harry Ransom Center, the Georgetown and Boston University Greene archives, the Bodleian Library, the Wren Library at Trinity College Cambridge and the national libraries of Vienna and Munich, as well as to Georg Fritsch in Vienna who arranged for me to see one of the Spiel archives. I am extremely grateful to Brigitte Petrisch for her meticulous research assistance in Vienna. Several other friends have contributed to this book in their conversation, sharing of knowledge and support. In particular I’d like to thank Katie Graham, Caroline Maclean, Beatrice Pembroke, Stephen Romer, Matthew Spender, John-Paul Stonard, Nick Stargardt, John Sutherland and Matt Taunton.

  I have been extremely fortunate in both my agent and my publishers. Zoe Waldie believed in both me and the book from the start and was invaluable in helping to shape it in its early stages and in finding it a home at Bloomsbury. Michael Fishwick has been a superb, visionary editor whose passionate enthusiasm for my writing has imbued me with great confidence and made the writing process all the more enjoyable. My desk editor Anna Simpson has been a model of clarity and calm, turning potential crises into solvable situations. I don’t think that I could have had a better experience of publishing.

  The book is dedicated to my son, Humphrey, though it might be a while before he can read it. Humphrey’s impending
birth provided a happy deadline for the first draft of the book and he himself has been a much happier distraction during the year of editing and proofing the book. I couldn’t have done all this without the unstinting support of his five grandparents – Ilse, Marcel, Paul, Margaret and Jimmy – and I certainly couldn’t have done it without my husband John, who has made this year of books and babies not only possible but fun. Neither husbands nor fathers come very well out of the book but John has excelled as both and I am more grateful than I can say.

  A Note on the Author

  DR LARA FEIGEL is a lecturer in English and the Medical Humanities at King’s College London, where her research is centred on the 1930s and the Second World War. She is the author of Literature, Cinema and Politics, 1930–1945 and the editor (with Alexandra Harris) of Modernism of Sea: Art and Culture at the British Seaside and (with John Sutherland) of the New Selected Journals of Stephen Spender. She has also written pieces for various publications, including the Guardian, Prospect and History Today. Lara lives in West Hampstead, London.

  By the Same Author

  A Nosegay: A Literary Journey from the Fragrant to the Fetid (ed.)

  Modernism on Sea: Art and Culture at the British Seaside (ed. with Alexandra Harris)

  Literature, Cinema and Politics, 1930–1945: Reading between the Frames

  New Selected Journals of Stephen Spender (ed. with John Sutherland)

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

  First published in Great Britain 2013

  This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square

  London

  WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © 2013 by Lara Feigel

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise

  make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means

  (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,

  printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the

  publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication

  may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

  Extracts from the works of Graham Greene, James Lees-Milne,

  John Lehmann and Louis MacNeice are reproduced by kind permission

  of David Higham Associates; extracts from the works of Rose Macaulay

  are reproduced by kind permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop on behalf

  of the Estate of Dame Rose Macaulay; extracts from the works of Elizabeth Bowen

  and Winston Churchill are reproduced by kind permission of Curtis Brown Ltd.;

  extracts from the works of Rosamond Lehmann are reproduced by kind permission

  of The Society of Authors; extract from the works of Sean O’Faolain are reproduced

  by kind permission of Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd; extracts from the works of

  J. B. Priestly are reproduced by kind permission of United Agents;

  extracts from the works of Charles Ritchie are reproduced by kind permission

  of Random House of Canada and Judith Robertson; extracts from the works

  of William Sansom are reproduced by kind permission of Greene and Heaton Ltd;

  extracts from the works of Evelyn Waugh are reproduced by kind permission

  of The Wylie Agency; extracts from the writings of Catherine Walston

  are reproduced by kind permission of Oliver Walston.

  Map by ML Design

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except

  in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders

  of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently

  overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN 9781408833483

  To find out more about our authors and their books please visit www.bloomsbury.com where you will find

  extracts, author interviews and details of forthcoming events, and to be the first to hear about latest releases

  and special offers, sign up for our newsletters here