Denton Welch (1915-48) died at the age of thirty-three after a brief but
brilliant career as a writer and painter. The revealing, poignant,
impressionistic voice that buoys his novels was much praised by critics
and literati in England and has since inspired creative artists from
William S. Burroughs to John Waters. His achievements were all the more
remarkable because he suffered from debilitating spinal and pelvic
injuries incurred in a bicycle accident at age eighteen.
Though German bombs were ravaging Britain, Welch wrote in his published
work about the idyllic landscapes and local people he observed in Kent.
There, in 1943, he met and fell in love with Eric Oliver, a handsome,
intelligent, but rather insecure "landboy"--an agricultural worker with
the wartime Land Army. Oliver would become a companion, comrade, lover,
and caretaker during the last six years of Welch's life. All fifty-one
letters that Welch wrote to Oliver are collected and annotated here for
the first time. They offer a historical record of life amidst the
hardship, deprivation, and fear of World War II, and also are a timeless
testament of one young man's tender and intimate emotions, his immense
courage in adversity, and his continual struggle for love and creative
existence.