Rosemary Hill writes:

The first part of A Writer at War is what survives of the diary she kept in the late summer of 1939, when she was 20 and then ‘carefully edited’ nearly 50 years later. It describes a time when she and some Oxford friends had formed a touring concert party, the Magpie Players, and were travelling round the Cotswolds bringing dance, ballads and allegorical Tudor drama to varyingly enthusiastic audiences. Here, not quite a writer yet and not quite at war either, Murdoch is at her most endearing, earnestly practising ‘Greensleeves’ on the recorder in a field full of cows, discussing the international situation while wondering with rather more urgency whether the scenery will turn up in time. The journal evokes a Betjemanesque interwar world of japes and ginger biscuits, ‘strenuous breakfasts’ and undergraduate tantrums. ‘Apparently while I was singing “Love is a sickness” yesterday Denys [Becher] gave an appalling display of temperament because he couldn’t find his tights.’

(LRB 22 April 2010)

Short Books Ltd | Hardback |ISBN: 9781906021221