While England Sleeps

This book about gay life in the 1930s in the context of the Spanish Civil War was briefly banned in the UK, after Stephen Spender sued on the basis that part of the book was taken from his autobiography. An extraordinary act, it seems to me, based on the sheer unlikeability of the lead character Brian. Brian Botsford is an upper class Cambridge graduate, attempting to write in 1930s London and part of a largely homosexual milieu. Edward, his lover, is a working class man who works on the Tube. Brian's first person narrative continually skewers him as delusional about his sexuality, snobbish, incapable of sexual fidelity, with no political ideals, a sponger for money and eventually - quel horreur - a Hollywood script writer. It's rare to show more find a writer willing to be so ruthless about the appalling nature of a first person narrator. The writing is always very readable, the sex is graphic (not to be read by the prudish), and the book occasionally feels as if it would have benefited from being given a bit more time. show less

My initial reaction to this book after reading the first twenty or thirty pages was that something, the language perhaps, felt inauthentic. Now, if there's a word I thought I would never use in a book review, it's inauthentic, so I was puzzled. After all, I'm not much of a judge on what is authentic in England in 1930s; my experiences of the 1930s are fully fictional. To a large extent it felt that someone was trying to dress up late-twentieth-century notions and mindsets in 1930s suit and then added some hot sex to make it looks attractive enough to make the reader forget how badly the combination fitted.

Fair enough, there is a framing device - the story of what happened in 1930s is told in the 1950s and an epilogue is dated in 1970s, show more which might explain something of it. Or maybe the reader was supposed to assume that Brian Botsford wasn't a very good writer. I don't know but the novel was a definitely let-down after all the times I've looked at the book in the bookshop and felt too skint to buy it just then.

On the minor gripes score, I just hate it when specifically British editions of American novels retain the American spellings - and with a book set in the 1930s England, it felt even more irritating than usual. show less

This is a roman a clef, based loosely on the life of a gay British intellectual in the 1930s. While the sex and romance were good, I thought the books strength was its depiction of the struggle for freedom (personal freedom, sexual freedom, freedom from class, freedom from fascism) and the failure of some of those struggles

Homosexuality as background for this tale of two lovers set apart by class and idealism. Leavitt writes an interesting historical novel of love and its many challenges.

Set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, While England Sleeps tells the story of a love affair between the aristocratic young British writer Brian Botsford, who thinks homosexuality is something he will outgrow, and Edward Phelan, a sensitive and idealistic working-class employee of the London Underground and a Communist party member. When the strains of class difference, sexual taboo, and Brian's ambivalence impel Edward to volunteer to fight against Franco in Spain, Brian pursues him across Europe and into the violent chaos of war.

I enjoyed Leavitt's version of this story. Apparently he lifted some of the material. Melancholy at times. The narrator, Brian Botsford, is a member of England's upper class, an ambitious writer who happens to be gay who believes that he initially suspects he will "outgrow" the inclination. He falls in love with Edward Phelan,who comes from a lower English Class class; in fact, he works on the underground and still lives with his family. Edward moves in with Brian, and all's well until social mores and the effects of repression intrude on their happiness. After the relationship deteriorates, Edward, who has Communist leanings, goes off to fight Fascists in the Spanish civil war. Brian's race to rescue him leads to the book's climax. The show more novel's action is compelling, its language beautiful but at times full of melancholy show less

Another disappointment. Review to come.