Knowing he published it in March 1939, before the war started, it has this eerie sense of what’s coming: “The shine may shine no doubt but how many people / Will see it with their eyes in Nineteen-Thirty-Nine?” What I’ve read about it is that, at the time, it was considered one of the best assessments on Britain in the 1930s ever published.
Right now I am reading MacNeice’s “Autumn Journal.” How’s that for “coincidence”?
Glynn: many thanks for your comment. Tat’s a lovely intersection! Autumn Journal is such an amazing piece of work. How are you finding it?
Knowing he published it in March 1939, before the war started, it has this eerie sense of what’s coming: “The shine may shine no doubt but how many people / Will see it with their eyes in Nineteen-Thirty-Nine?” What I’ve read about it is that, at the time, it was considered one of the best assessments on Britain in the 1930s ever published.