The Mood of Britain
‘See they don’t let us down when we come back this time ’, called the British soldiers embarking for the D-Day invasion.
Evelyn Waugh got the news of the D-day landings as he breakfasted prior to completing the chapter which removed by death Lord Marchmain from Brideshead Revisited. Having sealed and packaged it later in the same day, he confided to his diary for June 6th:
My only fear is that the invasion upsets my typist at St Leonard’s, or the posts to him with my manuscript.
For someone whose disillusionment with the war had gone so deep as his, this low-key reaction is less than surprising. It would have taken more than the impending liberation of Europe to enthuse the Crouchback, creator of Guy whose decision to volunteer in 1939, it will be recalled, was simplified by the way in which the Nazi-Soviet pact symbolised for him as the enemy the modern age in arms.
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