Macaulay, Rose

(British, 1881–1958)

Macaulay was a popular author of travel books, biographies, and satirical novels with a liberal social ethos and ironic tone. Potterism (1920), for instance, deals with the excesses of newspaper-journalists, and Crewe Train (1926) takes a flippant view of London literati and society life. Her most interesting works tend to fall outside these categories, notably They Were Defeated (1932), a historical novel set in the English Civil War. Non-Combatants and Others (1916) is an absorbing narrative about the First World War at home; the main character, Alix, comes to question the war's purpose following the suicide of her brother at the Front, and throws herself into organizing pacifist activities. Macaulay's post-war novels are her most famous. My Wilderness (1950) is about an alienated youngster in bomb-damaged London, and in The Towers of Trebizond (1956) a journey round Turkey by camel occasions many pointed observations of cultural difference and the consolations of Anglicanism.

Winifred Holtby  JS