Both of its time and timeless, a spy tale and a haunting love story... She is the supreme mid-century anatomist of the heart, with a unique sensitivity to the lives of ordinary English men and women in extremis
Guardian
Her novels and essays are alive with the erotic tensions of the blackout, the Blitz and the heightened pleasures of sex in the proximity of death. Preternaturally sensitive to colour, light and detail, she caught the nuances of the unnameable new sensations Londoners experienced
London Review of Books
Stylistically intense…[a] richly atmospheric portrait of a city and its residents under constant threat. It has a cast of memorable female characters who outshine the men
Daily Mail
A haunting portrayal of love and betrayal in a London hollowed by war.
It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella's life begin to crumble.
‘Alive with the erotic tensions of the blackout, the Blitz and the heightened pleasures of sex in the proximity of death’ London Review of Books
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROY FOSTER
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition