World War II stung Britain like a wasp. It was a stimulus and an endurance. The Blitz concentrated the mind wonderfully. The arts flowered - poetry and painting, cinema and dancing. It was a decade of miraculous invention. These were the years of the best work of Henry Moore and Francis Bacon, of T.S. Eliot and Orwell, of Noel Coward and Laurence Olivier. In this book, Andrew Sinclair recreates the world of the '40s with its encounters and its characters, its conflicts and its discoveries, its hopes and its disillusions. It was a world of pubs and clubs, where scarce drink could be found and the war forgotten. It was the time of the short piece, the poem, the story and the sketch. Anyone who knew anyone in the loose coterie of Fitzrovia that took over from Bloomsbury could have anything published. Andrew Sinclair's novels include The Breaking of Bumbo, My Friend Judas, The Albion Trilogy.