The Strings are False

📖 The Scoop

An autobiography written in the 1940s but set aside and published for the first time after MacNeice_s death in 1965._This incomplete account of himself is masterly, and the best thing Louis MacNeice ever wrote in prose. In this book he talks about himself freely, most intelligently, incisively, and without self-pity . . . MacNeice_s evaluation of himself at Marlborough, Oxford and Birmingham, and in the thirties, exhibits more luminously than any document so far published the effect of that time and its diversely pulling forces within one sensual and acute and honest maker in the upper middle class._ Geoffrey Grigson, Guardian_Not only vividly readable . . . but touching and memorable. Disillusionment without rancour, without even much surprise _ such is the achievement of a book which has many affinities with Orwell, and suggests that Orwell_s decent scepticism was that of a generation._ Christopher Ricks, Sunday Times

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / General (fancy, right?)