"By weaving together social history and literary history, Hewison shows by anecdote and example how writers, poets, and painters in Britain endured the war. After their heroic struggles against Fascism in the 1930s ended in defeat, writers found themselves without a role as the whole nation confronted the harsh realities of world war. Political, material, and psychological conditions conspired against them--and yet out of this atmosphere bordering on despair a flourishing literary society based in Soho developed; writers and artists met for the first time with a sense of common intellectual and creative identity. And writers found that they were not alone in discovering that under siege conditions, art, music, and painting were more--not less--important"--Jacket.