'From 1931 onwards,' Stephen Spender wrote, 'in common with many other people, I felt hounded by external events.' The date is not an arbitrary one: 1931 was the watershed between the post-war years and the pre-war years, the point at which the mood of the 'thirties first became generally apparent. (p. 65)

[By] 1931 many people in England certainly had begun to see the crisis in which they lived as more than a temporary economic reverse—to see it rather as the collapse of an inherited system of values, and the end of a secure life. (p. 66)

External events, if they are dire enough—a war, or the collapse of a society—challenge the value of private acts, and put the personal life to the test. For a young man (Spender was twenty-two in 1931) such a crisis, coming at a time when he was trying to define himself and his...