One of the major realistic novelists in England between the world wars, Francis Brett Young became Heinemann's leading novelist after the death of John Galsworthy. An early admirer and friend of D. H. Lawrence, he consciously wrote in reaction to Lawrence's work, insisting on creating normal and balanced characters rather than neurotic ones. The practice of medicine both in peacetime and in wartime played an important part in defining Brett Young's vision of human beings as essentially courageous and noble, as well as his keen sense of the interrelation between the physical and the spiritual. In all of his work there is a tension between the idealism of the poet and musician and the matter-of-factness of the doctor. Although he was a friend of leading literary and political figures of his day, he never became part of any literary coterie. His deceptively straightforward stories were misunderstood by academic...