Oxford in the Twenties: Recollections of Five Friends

Harold Acton, Evelyn Waugh, Maurice Bowra, Leslie Hore-Belisha and 'Crusoe' Robertson Glasgow, all friends of the author at Oxford and in later life, each in his way epitomized aspects of the post-First World War generation of undergraduates. Their careers and attitudes, the kaleidoscope of their friends are here evoked with extraordinarily percipient memories, often irreverent, anecdotal and amusing.It was a decade still scarred by bitter memories of the War and its subsequent social turmoil and nostalgia for the 'Golden Age' of pre-war undergraduate life that had been cut down. But it was a generation that quickly built up its own distinctive approach to life and Hollis follows through these influences into his friends' later careers: Hore-Belisha's political life, Robertson Glasgow's county cricket and writing, Bowra's University career, Acton and Waugh's literary and aesthetic achievements.They would, undoubtedly, have been outstanding in any era, but Christopher Hollis, himself a brilliant undergraduate as well, believes that the '20's were a particular watershed for University life, with many new influences, and with informed pro- and epi-logues he traces the history and functions of Oxford before and after his own days.