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Location: /Windsor

An appalling apocalypse came upon all life and therefore upon all literature’ G.K.Chesterton. The ‘apocalypse’ brought a new vision of the world and new writers to describe the vision. It was not surprising to find Galsworthy, Wells and Bennett still in fashion but the literary scene was no longer the preserve of the well educated middle class. The effect of Lawrence, Conrad, Tressell [albeit posthumously and with just one work] and their like ensured that the disadvantaged themselves would start to fight their own battles with the 'pen that is mightier than the sword’. W.H. Davies, with the backing of George Bernard Shaw, was among the first to break the mould.

It was an England of changing perceptions of sexual roles, the class system and the way that people saw themselves changing in a very transitory world. Strangely enough this ‘identity crisis’ was largely brought about by Irish writers, two in particular. George Bernard Shaws ‘New Man’ as well as being the protagonist in much of his drama was also Shaw himself - supporter of voting rights, education for all, income equality, abolishment of property rights. The prefaces to his plays were little short of political pamphlets. Radically anti war, his plays examined mans thoughts and his beliefs. Truly a writer fit for his time.

James Joyce was a true European. His revolutionary Ulysses was the start of Modernism in the novel and the move towards a stream of consciousness approach as opposed to a solid narrative structure.

English artistic conventions were being rocked to the core and here was Lawrence, son of a miner, writing about the sexual angst of men and women. England would no longer be the land of our forefathers-for good or ill. ‘ A mirror up to nature’ it may be but what power literature has!

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