Few histories of the British home front during the second world war really capture the "mood, temper and climate", lamented Elizabeth Bowen, a novelist who lived in London at the time. Death's constant threat fuelled an apocalyptic hedonism. The Blitz was grim (more than 40,000 people died), but glorious too, in its way. In addition, the experience left a distinct and enduring literary legacy, writes Lara Feigel, an academic at King's College London, in her new book, "The Love-charm of Bombs", which came out in Britain in February and is now being published in America. A fast-living writing trio-Bowen, Graham Greene and Henry Yorke (pen-name Henry Green)-are the main protagonists. They mucked in with the war effort, but their Blitz was made unique by love affairs. The passions it aroused, and the sense of timelessness that ensued-a "suspended present", Ms Feigel calls it-were fertile muses. "These writers, fire-fighting, ambulance-driving, patrolling the streets, were the successors of the soldier poets of the first world war," the author argues in her introduction.
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