While England Sleeps (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

Leavitt tells his story from the point of view of a fictitious narrator named Brian Botsford, an Oxford-educated aspiring writer in his early twenties. Brian has already had innumerable homosexual contacts but thinks he will eventually outgrow this juvenile phase and settle down to marriage, home, and family. Although he is not particularly interested in politics, he gets drawn into Communist gatherings because so many of his intellectual friends are joining the Party.

The time is 1936. The Spanish Civil War is raging, and liberal sympathies with the Republican cause are inducing many young Englishmen to become card-carrying Communists and even to join international brigades to fight against Generalissimo Franco’s fascists. Brian meets a handsome young working-class homosexual named Edward Phelan at a Communist gathering. They quickly become lovers and begin living together in Brian’s tiny London flat.

Brian’s tyrannical Aunt Constance, who provides him with meager and irregular financial support, keeps pressuring him to get married. She finally matches him up with a young woman named Philippa Archibald who intrigues him because of her intelligence and liberated attitude. He carries on a heterosexual affair with her while maintaining his homosexual relationship with Edward. Eventually, however, Edward finds out about his rival and becomes so distressed that he volunteers to fight for the Republican cause in Spain.

Brian, regarding Edward’s departure as a sign of fate, proposes marriage to Philippa. He is astonished when she tells him she does not believe he could ever be a satisfactory heterosexual husband. Brian realizes he has been acting against his true nature, that he is a homosexual at heart and really loves only Edward.

The gentle Edward has gotten a taste of war and is desperate to get out of uniform. Brian travels to Spain in an effort to rescue him and manages to smuggle him aboard a ship bound for England. But Edward, who has contracted typhoid from filthy living conditions and contaminated food, dies at sea.

Leavitt, a polished and occasionally poetic writer, describes homosexual behavior in graphic detail. Since he was not born until 1961, his descriptions of English politics and the chaotic situation in Civil War Spain seem remote and unconvincing.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. XC, October 1, 1993, p.253.

Boston Globe. October21, 1993, p.71.

Library Journal. CXVIII, August, 1993, p.152.

Los Angeles Times. October 3, 1993, p.3.

The New Republic. CCIX, November 8, 1993, p.44.

The New York Times Book Review. XCVIII, October 3, 1993, p.14.

Publishers Weekly. CCXL, August 9, 1993, p.450.

San Francisco Chronicle. October 24, 1993, p. REV4.

The Times Literary Supplement. October 29, 1993, p.20.

The Washington Post Book World. XXIII, September 12, 1993, p.S.