Éadaoín Lynch writes on the British literature of the Second World War. Writers such as Roald Dahl wrote directly about the experience of killing in combat, and the godlike power of mechanised warfare. The dominant mode of writing death and killing lay in understatement, detachment and voyeurism.

The writers of the 1940s were paralysed by the sense that those who had gone before them and experienced the Great War had said everything there was to say about war and the pity of war.