Lara Feigel in conversation with Selina Hastings, Keats House, Hampstead

"The bomb-bursts…hold one like a love charm," Graham Greene wrote, reflecting the odd mixture of insouciance and infatuation inspired by the bombs of the Blitz. With catastrophe suddenly a palpable presence, literary life in London flourished. Greene’s peculiar combination of destruction and seduction forms the title of Lara Feigel’s The Love Charm of Bombs, which interweaves fiction with historical fact to depict the experience of five real life London writers during the Blitz. She will join award-winning biographer Selina Hastings to discuss this fascinating novel in stunning surroundings of Keats House.

As an academic at Kings College London, Feigel’s expertise on both literature and the history of WWII is beautifully entwined as she draws historical letters, diaries and civil defence records into a rich chronicle of 1940s London. By focusing on the experience of five of the generation’s greatest writers – Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Elizabeth Bowen, Henry Green and Hilde Spiel – Feigel uncovers the thrilling creativity and romance amidst the fearful threat of bombs.