Our Age: English Intellectuals Between the World Wars : A Group Portrait

Our Age tells the story of the intellectuals formed by Cambridge, Oxford and the London School of Economics between 1920 and 1949, the people who in turn shaped the literature, science and politics of their age - and to some extent ours. In a wonderfully detailed and always stimulating narrative, Annan brings to life the world of Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, of Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, of Cyril Connolly and Cecil Beaton, of George Orwell and T.S. Elliot, among others. Filled with telling portraits, Our Age examines the movements that influenced this generation - pacifism, collectivism and modernism. Annan explores the cult of homosexuality and the new morality that pervaded his generation. And he shows why, in the age of appeasement and Munich, some became Marxists and a handful of them Soviet spies, while other became Roman Catholics.