Although Alun Lewis has been acknowledged one of the most significant poets of World War II, he was also a masterful writer of short stories. A. L. Rowse considered the stories in The Last Inspection (1942) "the finest" to "come out of the war," and some have thought the stories to be Lewis's supreme achievement. Walter Allen, for example, writing in the New Statesman, remarked that they represent "an altogether higher level than any other English writing inspired by the war." While Lewis's stories are by no means limited to the subject of war, the war stories would, by themselves, make him an important writer of his time.

Lewis was born 1 July 1915 in Cwmaman, in the coal-mining region of south Wales, to T. J. "Tom" Lewis and Gwladys Elizabeth Lewis. Soon after the birth of a second son, Glyn, Tom left a teaching position to enlist, and the family...