“In this house Caitlin and I have our bedroom on the top floor, and so far we haven’t got up even when the German machines are over us like starlings.”

Meeting the danger of wartime air raids with characteristic dark humour · Letter to Vernon Watkins, 1940

• Love
• War

“The one thing that’s saving me, I mean, not from any melodramatic issues, but just from sheer unhappiness, is lots and lots of work.”

Describing creative work as a defence against unhappiness · Letter to Vernon Watkins, 20 April 1936

• Art
• Despair
• Hope

“In the shape of a boy, and a funny boy at that, I have only a very short time to learn how mad and marvellous it is.”

Combining youthful wonder with an acute awareness of mortality · Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, New Year 1934

• Childhood
• Mortality
• Time