Closing Times
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
At the crossroads of memory and elegy, Closing Times by Dan Davin presents a luminous collection of reminiscences centred on the legendary drinking haunts of wartime and postwar Oxford and London — most famously, the pubs where writers, scholars, and bohemians gathered to argue, confess, and dream. Davin, a New Zealander who became a senior editor at Oxford University Press and a decorated veteran of the Second World War, chronicles his intimate friendships with some of the most remarkable literary figures of the twentieth century, including Louis MacNeice, Enid Starkie, Neville Coghill, and W.R. Rodgers, capturing them in vivid, affectionate portraits that shimmer with wit and melancholy. Rooted in the rich tradition of the literary memoir, Closing Times stands as both a social document and an act of private mourning — an elegy for a vanished world of intellectual camaraderie. Davin's prose is precise yet warmly anecdotal, carrying the authority of an insider who understood that pub conversation was itself a form of high culture. The book illustrates how genius and friendship are inseparable, and how the passing of time transforms shared evenings into something mythological — leaving the reader to wonder what, exactly, is lost when the last light is called and the doors are shut.
Author: Dan Davin
Format: Hardback
Published: 1975, Oxford University Press
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
At the crossroads of memory and elegy, Closing Times by Dan Davin presents a luminous collection of reminiscences centred on the legendary drinking haunts of wartime and postwar Oxford and London — most famously, the pubs where writers, scholars, and bohemians gathered to argue, confess, and dream. Davin, a New Zealander who became a senior editor at Oxford University Press and a decorated veteran of the Second World War, chronicles his intimate friendships with some of the most remarkable literary figures of the twentieth century, including Louis MacNeice, Enid Starkie, Neville Coghill, and W.R. Rodgers, capturing them in vivid, affectionate portraits that shimmer with wit and melancholy. Rooted in the rich tradition of the literary memoir, Closing Times stands as both a social document and an act of private mourning — an elegy for a vanished world of intellectual camaraderie. Davin's prose is precise yet warmly anecdotal, carrying the authority of an insider who understood that pub conversation was itself a form of high culture. The book illustrates how genius and friendship are inseparable, and how the passing of time transforms shared evenings into something mythological — leaving the reader to wonder what, exactly, is lost when the last light is called and the doors are shut.