The Light and the Dark, , Charles Percy Snow, Penguin Books, Limited, 1962, 0140018247, 9780140018240, . .

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Red in the Morning , Dornford Yates, Jan 1, 2001, Fiction, 248 pages. Set in France after the war amongst the beautiful landscapes of Biarritz, Pau and the PyrenÐ’Ñ—es, Yates' favourite thriller hero Richard Chandos returns with Jonathan Mansel in a ....

The Sleep of Reason , C. P. Snow, Jan 1, 2000, Fiction, 452 pages. The penultimate novel in the series takes Goya's theme of monsters that appear in our sleep. The sleep of reason here is embodied in the ghastly murders ....

Sanders , Edgar Wallace, Jan 11, 2008, Fiction, 190 pages. Employing his unique style of innocent and endearing humour, Bones has written to the newspapers inviting the Foreign Secretary to pay a visit to the African territories which ....

Death Under Sail , C. P. Snow, Jan 1, 2000, Fiction, 234 pages. Roger Mills, a Harley Street specialist, is taking a sailing holiday on the Norfolk Broads. When his six guests find him at the tiller of his yacht with a smile on his face and ....

The Masters , C. P. Snow, Dec 8, 2000, Fiction, 358 pages. The fourth in the Strangers and Brothers series begins with the dying Master of a Cambridge college. His imminent demise causes intense rivalry and jealousy amongst the other ....

The Two Cultures , C. P. Snow, Jul 30, 1993, Philosophy, 107 pages. Analyzes the problems and consequences of the lack of communication between scientists and non-scientists in the modern world.

Last Things , C. P. Snow, Jan 1, 2000, Fiction, 396 pages. The last in the Strangers and Brothers series has Sir Lewis Eliot's heart stop briefly during an operation. During recovery he passes judgement on his achievements and dreams ....

A Coat of Varnish , C. P. Snow, Jan 1, 2000, Fiction, 354 pages. Humphrey Leigh, retired resident of Belgravia, pays a social visit to an old friend, Lady Ashbrook. She is waiting for her test results, fearing cancer. When Lady Ashbrook gets ....

Keepers of the King's Peace , Edgar Wallace, Jan 11, 2008, Fiction, 176 pages. 'I want you to go up the Isango, Bones, ' said Sanders, 'there may be some trouble there - a woman is working miracles.' Unexpected things happen in the territories of the ....

The Second World War: The hinge of fate , Winston Churchill, 1948, , . . The Conscience of the Rich , C. P. Snow, 2000, Fiction, 328 pages. Seventh in the Strangers and Brothers series, this is a novel of conflict exploring the world of the great Anglo-Jewish banking families between the two World Wars. Charles ....

The Light and the Dark is the fourth novel in C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers series. Set in England in the lead-up to and during World War II, it portrays Lewis Eliot's friendship with the gifted scholar and remarkable individual Roy Calvert, and Calvert's inner turmoil and quest for meaning in life. Calvert was based on Snow's friend, Coptic scholar, Charles Allberry.[2] Their relationship is developed further in The Masters.

The title - The Light and the Dark - refers to the beliefs of Manichaeism, which the book refers to as "Christian heresy" but is now often referred to as religion in its own right. "In its cosmology, the whole of cosmology is a battle of the light against the dark. Man's spirit is part of the light, and his flesh of the dark." [3]

The Light and the Dark is the second in the Strangers and Brothers series. The story is set in Cambridge, but the plot also moves to Monte Carlo, Berlin and Switzerland. Lewis Eliot narrates the career of a childhood friend. Roy Calvert is a brilliant but controversial linguist who is about to be elected to a fellowship.

"The Light and the Dark" is one of C. P. Snow's best novels, as good as "The Masters" and "Corridors of Power", but with a special character of its own. It os based on Snow's friendship with another young Cambridge scholar who was killed flying bombers in the war. The development of this intense friendship gives the whole novel a strong charge of feeling not always found in Snow, who is sometimes accused of being too cool. It is good to see it reissued, with Snow's other novels, in a handsome, well-produced papereback by House of Stratus.

This is a fine novel, one of the best of the "Strangers and Brothers" series. It is the story of one of the narrator's closest friends, Roy Calvert, who also figures strongly in Snow's Cambridge University novel "The Masters". Calvert is a brilliant linguist,attractive to women but manic-depressive and in some ways naive to the point of being oblivious to the real world. In particular, he has an ambiguous attitude towards Nazi Germany, where he ius lured to visit.

Despite the intriguing insights that the book offers into 1930s academia and the process of government in Britain in the early days of WWII (the passing comments on the nature of the decision to embark on the strategic bombing campaign are perticularly fascinating), the real strength of the novel for me are in how it conveys the feelings of friendship felt by the narrator for his younger colleague. This colleague is charismatic and clever, but flawed. He suffers from what we would now know as bipolar disorder and his life choices are fatefully driven by his condition. Even when seeming to espouse fascism - as a substitute for the faith in God that he cannot find - we are conscious, through the narrator's insight and compassion that these are the actions of a man who is only able to control his own destiny at the greatest cost to himself and those close to him.

C.P. Snow is my favourite "lesser-known serious author" of his generation. This is one of the earlier books, both in terms of when it was written and most of the internal chronology, in the "Strangers and Brothers" series. Opinions differ about Snow's writing abilities, but at his best he is, IMO, limpid, vivid and insightful. His inclination to comment (usually in the first person voice of the series narrator Lewis Eliot) on people's psychology, rather than drawing out character solely through dialogue and action, is not to everyone's taste. In Snow's defence, I would suggest that when he does use dialogue and action, it is often to brilliant effect. Also, whatever one thinks of the "narrator voice commentary" technique, the insights conveyed can't be faulted as human insight. There is, as well, a vein of underplayed, delightful humour in the books. Make sure to look out for Lady Bocastle's acid remarks about society and human nature, for example. The Light and the Dark is the story of a brilliantly gifted young academic, based on a real friend of Snow when they were both dons at Christ's College, Cambridge in the same period as the novel. The Roy Calvert character, the young don, suffers from what would nowadays be called bipolar disorder. However, the interaction of this affliction with Calvert's intellectual and spiritual gifts makes for a much bigger discussion. It's always tricky to recommend the ideal order in which to read this series. On the whole, I recommend reading first The Masters - widely agreed to be Snow's finest - and then this novel, my personal favourite over The Masters by a small margin. Anyway, read this and other Snow books if any of the following interest you: British history between the wars; academic life; colourful characters; offbeat areas of human psychology in a mannered society. Kindle edition is fine. The intricacy of Snow's observations, and his frequent choice phrases, make searchability very valuable.

C.P. Snow was born in Leicester, on 15 October 1905. He was educated from age 11 at Alderman Newton's School for boys where he excelled in most subjects, enjoying a reputation for an astounding memory. In 1923, he gained an external scholarship in science at London University, whilst working as a laboratory assistant at Newton's to gain the necessary practical experience, because Leicester University, as it was to become, had no chemistry or physics departments at that time.

Having achieved a first class degree, followed by a Master of Science he won a studentship in 1928 which he used to research at the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Snow went on to become a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1930 where he also served as a tutor, but his position became increasingly titular as he branched into other areas of activity. In 1934, he began to publish scientific articles in 'Nature', and then 'The Spectator' before becoming editor of the journal 'Discovery' in 1937.

He was also writing fiction during this period and in 1940 'Strangers and Brothers' was published. This was the first of eleven novels in the series and was later renamed 'George Passant' when 'Strangers and Brothers' was used to denote the series itself. 'Discovery' became a casualty of the war, closing in 1940. However, by this time Snow was already involved with the Royal Society, who had organised a group to specifically use British scientific talent operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. He served as the Ministry's technical director from 1940 to 1944.

After the war, he became a civil service commissioner responsible for recruiting scientists to work for the government and also returned to writing, continuing the 'Strangers and Brothers' novels. 'The Light and the Dark' was published in 1947, followed by '' in 1949, and perhaps the most famous and popular of them all, 'The Masters', in 1951. He planned to finish the cycle within five years, but the final novel 'Last Things' wasn't published until 1970.

C.P. Snow married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950 and they had one son, Philip, in 1952. He was knighted in 1957 and became a life peer in 1964, taking the title Baron Snow of the City Leicester. He also joined Harold Wilson's first government as Parliamentary Secretary to the new Minister of Technology. When the department ceased to exist in 1966 he became a vociferous back-bencher in the House of Lords.

After finishing the 'Strangers and Brothers' series, Snow continued writing both fiction and non-fiction. His last work of fiction was 'A Coat of Vanish', published in 1978. His non-fiction included a short life of Trollope published in 1974 and another, published posthumously in 1981, 'The Physicists: a Generation that Changed the World'. He was also inundated with lecturing requests and offers of honorary doctorates. In 1961, he became Rector of St. Andrews University and for ten years also wrote influential weekly reviews for the 'Financial Times'.

C.P. Snow (1905-1980) is probably best remembered for having postulated, in 1959, the existence of a growing gulf between the sciences and the humanities ("The Two Cultures"). A physicist who later successfully served in government, he also wrote a very interesting, albeit stylistically simple, sequence of self-contained novels ("Strangers and Brothers") roughly stretching from the 1920s to the 1960s, whose narrator, Lewis Eliot progresses from rather humble origins in an English provincial town to law school, a practice in law, a fellowship at Cambridge and government work during and after the second world war. Eliot is a decent, human and sympathetic character who is, at first, Snow`s device for exploring for exploring more brilliant or outstanding characters -in this respect Eliot sometimes reminds one of a more intelligent and senstive version of Conan Doyles' Dr. Watson. Snow`s novels quickly become more concerned with exploring routine struggles for power and influence in the changing English society of his time.

"The Light and the Dark", written just after the second World War (1947), is a tale about one of Eliot`s friends, Roy Calvert, a brilliant young linguist at Cambridge who suffers from maniac-depressive bouts. There are four parts to the novel. In the first part, set circa 1935, we meet Roy as a graceful and gifted graduate student and see how he moves through a slough of despondency, rises to a peak of reckless, destructive behaviour and then is impelled to a blindingly harsh and absoluteless cheerless intuition about reality. At the same time, Snow regales us with an excellent portrayal of the academic manoeuvres in the closed college world which culminate in a fellowship for Roy.Read more ›

A terribly bittersweet, hauntingly powerful novel about Roy Calvert, first seen in "Time of Hope". A manic-depressive, I think. Perhaps it was not so recognized in the 30's and early 40's when this takes place. A very memorable and sensitive portrait of the love and friendship that can exist between two heterosexual men, as it delicately portrays the compassion and caring they come to share, Roy, and Lewis Eliot, the narrator. Melancholic and sad, yet a wonderful book. Just as striking as two others, "Time of Hope" and "The Conscience of the Rich", but even more poignant. The last line could not be more perfect. Snow is a master of the human psyche and condition.

Reread six years later. And still an achingly beautiful book. Sometimes I wanted to weep, knowing as I did so many outcomes. I really think now that Lewis loved Roy and was closer to him than almost any other person in the entire series. Not that anything sexual is ever implied, but he certainly loved Roy more than Martin, his own brother, although to be fair, Martin is so much younger than Lewis. And, too, I don't think Snow could write with such intimate insight into Roy's soul without having known such a man. There is a certain English actor - is it Nigel Havers? - that I see as Roy. Not sure. Anyway, I purely loved this book, more than almost all the others.

Perhaps the longest but not the best of the Strangers and Brothers cycle of novels, yet "The Light and the Dark" (1946) contains the initial germ of the idea for which Snow is best remembered, his "Two Cultures" observation on the gap between scientific and humanistic scholarship. One of Snow's key arguments in his original late-1950s lectures on the subject involved what he considered the scientific absurdity of WW II strategic mass bombing, supported by politicians and questioned by Britain's scientists. through his narrator, SNow tells the story of Roy Calvert, a brilliant Middle-Eastern scholar-researcher who, after flirting flagrantly with Nazi intellectuals in the late 1930a, immolates himself as a bomber pilot late in the war. His death, along with those of a disproportionate number of other air crewmen, brings the entire bombing strategy into question.

One infers that like many of his characters, Calvert is based on a real person, in this case, one whom Snow apparently held in high affection. The problem with the book is that, while he keeps alluding to his charm, Snow actually describes Calvert as a cad and bounder in his relations with women and colleagues, plus a committed fascist up to the very outbreak of the war. Someone so despicable that you cannot begin to share the sorrow SNow's protagonist feels about his death in battle. It's a major failure of Snow's extraordinary narrative technique. Worth reading anyway, for its important place in the series and Snow's evolving views of society, as well as its vivid pictures of the back corridors of government in a nation absorbed in total war.

Though the Strangers and Brothers sequence as a whole is basically a semi-autobiographical narrative describing one man's life in England in the middle third or so of the twentieth century, here the focus of attention is not narrator Lewis Eliot himself but a younger friend. The Light and the Dark is set during about a decade starting in the early thirties, just after Lewis Eliot has been elected a Fellow of a minor Cambridge college. There, h...more Originally published on my blog here in January 2004.

Like all of Snow's novels, The Light and the Dark is concerned mainly with relationships between men, particularly the small scale politics of the (still single sex) Oxbridge college. There are female characters in the novel, mainly there to provide some love interest for Calvert (Eliot is married, but his wife plays no part in the novel except for the occasional passing reference). Within its limits, though, the writing is superb. You get the feeling that Snow hits his stride once he can begin writing about the human interactions behind committee meetings, and even to someone like myself who hates them, he makes them fascinating. (less) blurb - Eliot spent the first years of the war scared stiff, and he was right to be. He was about to find himself at the heart of a project that would threaten the future of civilisation. They were fighting the Germans, the Americans weren't yet in the war, the League of Nations had fallen apart, and the enemy was poised to invade Europe. His private life was in shreds - his wife, a suicide. He shut up his Chelsea house and at age 35 he was living ridiculously, wander...more 5) 'The Light and the Dark'

With Adam Godley [Lewis Eliot], Adam Levy [Roy Calvert], Juliet Aubrey [Margaret Davidson], Rupert Vanisttart [Hector Rose], Anne-Marie Duff [Rosalind Calvert], Peter Marinker [Houston Eggar], Anthony Calf [Gilbert Cooke], Kenneth Collard [Willie Rumtofski], Carla Simpson [Betty Vane] and David Haig [The Narrator].(less)

C.P. Snow isn't everyone's cup of tea--he was famously described as "Proust without the filaments" and that does capture something of his plain style--but his depictions of character ring true, and nowhere more than in this book, my favorite of the series, in fact my single favorite novel, followed by Robertson Davies' "Fifth Business". Snow 's depiction of Roy Calvert, a factionalized version of the brilliant scholar C.R.C. Allberry, who translated the Manichean Psalmbook, is harrowing, intense...more C.P. Snow isn't everyone's cup of tea--he was famously described as "Proust without the filaments" and that does capture something of his plain style--but his depictions of character ring true, and nowhere more than in this book, my favorite of the series, in fact my single favorite novel, followed by Robertson Davies' "Fifth Business". Snow 's depiction of Roy Calvert, a factionalized version of the brilliant scholar C.R.C. Allberry, who translated the Manichean Psalmbook, is harrowing, intense, yet shot through with gusts of comedy. A novel of friendship, politics, loss and and courage (autocorrect added "corkage" and in view of the amount of booze put away I'm inclined to adopt it). Highly recommended.(less)

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Calvert is viewed by some as a brilliant young scholar, an Orientalist whose area of expertise—the ancient Sogdian language—is about as esoteric as one can get in Middle Eastern studies. To others, especially several of the older scholars of Cambridge, Calvert represents something inappropriate in youth and potentially scandalous for the college, particularly considering the many rumors that have spread about concerning his affairs with various women. http://kgarch.org/mgm.pdf http://kgarch.org/1341.pdf http://kgarch.org/10m.pdf http://kgarch.org/h52.pdf http://kgarch.org/m2m.pdf http://kgarch.org/lf5.pdf http://kgarch.org/25k.pdf http://kgarch.org/e25.pdf http://kgarch.org/6fk.pdf http://kgarch.org/ecd.pdf http://kgarch.org/jhj.pdf http://kgarch.org/5ce.pdf http://kgarch.org/hn3.pdf http://kgarch.org/361.pdf http://kgarch.org/2kf.pdf