Children of the sun

Description

Examines a generation of British men who, in the aftermath of World War I, revolted against their fathers, believing traditional concepts of masculinity led to war, and attempted to redefine manhood. They became known as aesthetes or dandies. Major figures in this movement included Harold, Lord Acton and Brian Howard, followed by Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Randolph Churchill, Cecil Beaton, W.H. Auden, and Christopher Isherwood. D.H. Lawrence was regarded as an "antidandy," while George Orwell and F.R. Leavis led the opposition to the aesthetic movement.

Description

"Children of the Sun is Martin Green's term for that brilliant and influential generation of young men who, in the aftermath of World War I, refused to become the fathers, husbands, and heads of households their fathers had been before them. Instead, they cultivated all their lives, alternative styles of young manhood--the dandy, the rogue, and the naif--which then became for a time the dominant cultural styles of much of the English-speaking world. Martin Green traces the fate of that gifted generation through the lives of two of its central figures, Harold Acton and Brian Howard, and some forty of their friends, most of whom attained considerable importance in British life, notably, in the arts and letters, but also in the sciences, diplomacy, and politics. Prominent among them are Evelyn Waugh, Randolph Churchill, W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Stephen Spender, Cecil Beaton, Cyril Connolly, John Strachey, "Kim" Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald MacLean. Their story takes us from Eton, Oxford, London in the twenties, through the Depression and World War II, into exile, the decay of hope, aging, and suicide. A contrapuntal them of Green's book is the rise of the opposition to "the Children of the Sun," in F.R. Leavis, George Orwell, Kingsley Amis, and others whose "turn" came in the late 1950s."--Publisher's website.

Subjects

Genres

• Biography

Other Editions

• Children of the sun: a narrative of "decadence" in England after 1918Basic Books1976-01-01
• Children of the sunAxios Press2008
• Children of the sunBasic Books1976-01-01
• Children of the sunBasic Books1976-01-01
• Children of the sunConstable1977-01-01
• Children of the sunWideview Books1980-01-01