Contains various essays and reviews that W H Auden wrote during the years when he was living in England, and also includes the full versions of his two illustrated travel books, "Letters from Iceland" and "Journey to a War". This book is intended not only for Auden's admirers, but those concerned with twentieth-century literature and culture.

This book contains all the essays and reviews that W. H. Auden wrote during the years when he was living in England, and also includes the full original versions of his two illustrated travel books, Letters from Iceland (written in collaboration with Louis MacNeice) and Journey to a War (written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood). Auden's early prose ranges from extravagant indiscreet travel diaries through sharply observed critiques of writers from John Skelton to Winston Churchill. It includes studies of communism and Christianity; audaciously wide-ranging essays on literature, psychology, and politics; and writings about gossip, sex, prisons, and schools.

"For anyone interested in `early Auden' this book is indispensable."---Bernard Knox, The New York Review of Books