This is a study of the relationship between politics and literary writing in British culture during the 1930s and subsequent decades. It takes as its main case study the career of Edward Upward, a writer whose commitment to Marxism-Leninism in the 1930s forced him to examine the political dimensions of literary form. It also pays a generous amount of attention to other writers, such as Auden, Isherwood, Spender, Humphrey Jennings, and Charles Madge...