There's a slightly dated air … to Helmets and Wasps; it is set during the last war, and the mode of presentation, that of a personal diary of self-revelation, isn't unfamiliar. Don't be put off; it's most superbly done, rather in the manner of Thomas Mann—a study of a moral crisis deriving from a situation in which a cultured man meets another style of culture, another view of life, which tempts and threatens him…. His complex character—love of culture and of order, desire to dominate and desire to yield—encounters the good life which corrupts order and discipline. This ancient opposition is explored with great subtlety, the German and Italian background marvellously handled. It's an admirable novel.