Eunice Buckley

In July 1914 a family gathers at a holiday hotel in Devon. There is a dominant father and a socially ambitious mother who adores her son Dennis. When he arrives it is at once clear to the reader why he does not fit in with his smugly conventional family. Then, with the outbreak of war, the tone of the book changes: it focuses on Dennis’s refusal to fight, indeed on his abhorrence of violence; his falling in love with Alan; and his close friendship with Antoinette, who has not realised she is lesbian but is unabashed when she does. Dennis, however, is in agony about being ‘a musical man’ (slang for being gay): ‘Abnormal – perverted – against nature – he could hear the epithets that would be hurled against him. But what had nature been about, in giving him the soul of a woman in the body of a man?’ Running through all this is the background of the war. At first everyone thought it would be over by Christmas. Then there were the horrors of 1915. And then conscription started. Month by month one sees what happens to Dennis and the other COs (conscientious objectors) he knows. The book was published by C.W. Daniel, a pacifist publisher, in May 1918. In September the book was banned for being ‘likely to prejudice the recruiting, training, and discipline of persons in his Majesty’s forces.’ Unsold copies were seized and the publisher was fined.

Rex Anderson, the miracle-healer whose sensational career was outlined in the author's previous book Wonder-Worker, is the subject of this unusual story. His many-sided character is mirrored in the strange and varied experiences into which he is drawn after being toppled from the giddy heights of success. Keen insight into an extensive range of human psychology is displayed in the description of the new and often alien worlds he enters, becoming familiar with extremes of sorrow and joy, and the dull, unspectacular plodding in between. A package tour on the Continent, a hectic affair with a degenerate socialite, a Soho restaurant run by a Greek family, and his poignant relationship with a girl half gipsy, half aristocract, through whom he learns the meaning of love.

A famous concert-pianist; a famous healer; a child whose birth raises questions of far-reaching significance. Contains vivid descriptions of the musical world and insight into problems connected with the various branches of unorthodox healing. The action shifts from England to Italy and back again, with characters being portrayed with ironical brilliance and affection. The two leading characters, Zero and Rosalind, from the author's previous works "Just Was My Lot" and "The Face of the Tempter", are further developed. The whole story is one of compassionate humanity, compelling depth and dramatic power, enlivened with flashes of delightful humour.

The story traces the development of Elissa, the orphaned daughter of Greek and Viennese parents, from childhood to mature womanhood, through a wide gamut of emotional experiences. Depicts her relationship with friends, relatives, lovers, and enemies; portrayal of childhood and social life in the London of the early part of the century, and in later years in a Swiss hotel.