Book dossier

Non-combatants and others

by Rose Macaulay

Non-Combatants and Others is scathing and heart-breaking, yet finds a way for pacifists to work for an end to conflict. Witty, furious and despairing in turn, Macaulay’s forgotten magazine columns reveal new insights into how people find war and its tyrannies creeping up on them. ‘Miss Anstruther’s Letters’ is devastating. But more desperate a loss than Miss Anstruther’s books were the letters from her secret lover, who had just died. Drawing from her own secret heartbreak, Macaulay wrote her life most powerfully into this, her last short story.