"An Awful Illumination: The Demon Lover (1945) and The Heat of the Day (1949)," in Elizabeth Bowen: An Estimation, Vision and Barnes & Noble Books, 1981, pp. 156-88.

In the excerpt below, Lee examines Bowen's depiction of the English middle-class and war-time London, concluding that "The Demon Lover" is "the most horrific of the war-time stories."

'I say, this war's an awful illumination; it's destroyed our dark: we have to see where we are.'

Elizabeth Bowen's attitude to the civilization she inhabited was confirmed by the war; and during it . . . she did some of her best work. All the aspects of her disenchantment with England and Europe in the Thirties coalesced. The war intensified her sense that the century she had grown up with was inimical to faith, hope, and love. In this she was not alone: other intellectuals felt that the war had been earned. Waugh repeatedly describes a diseased...