Children of Darkness and Light (British Literature) - Softcover

Born in London, Mosley was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford and served in Italy during the Second World War, winning the Military Cross for bravery. He succeeded as 3rd Baron Ravensdale in 1966 and, on the death of his father on 3 December 1980, he also succeeded to the Baronetcy. His father, Sir Oswald Mosley, founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932 and was a supporter of Benito Mussolini. Sir Oswald was arrested in 1940 for his antiwar campaigning, and spent the majority of World War II in prison. As an adult, Nicholas was a harsh critic of his father in "Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley and Family 1933-1980" (1983), calling into question his father's motives and understanding of politics. Nicholas' work contributed to the 1998 Channel 4 television programme titled 'Mosley' based on his father's life. At the end of the mini-series, Nicholas is portrayed meeting his father in prison to ask him about his national allegiance. Mosley began to stammer as a young boy, and attended weekly sessions with speech therapist Lionel Logue in order to help him overcome the speech disorder. Mosley says his father claimed never really to have noticed his stammer, but feels Sir Oswald may have been less aggressive when speaking to him than he was towards other people as a result.

A disturbingly prophetic vision of a contaminated near-future from the British writer whose dense and demanding fiction include Accident (1966) and the Whitbread Award-winning Hopeful Monsters (1991). It begins when Harry, a veteran journalist who has specialized in stories about catastrophes, travels from London to Cumbria (site of a nuclear power station) in northern England to write about the reported appearance of the Blessed Virgin to a group of children who seem to have formed a kind of adult-free commune. He suspects a red herring meant to deflect public attention from a nuclear accident, and finds what may be evidence of scientific experiments involving children. The story of Harry's own failing relationships with his suspicious wife and distracted young son adds a further dimension of uncertainty, as does Mosley's oddly--and often quite effectively--muted style, filled with rhetorical questions and abrupt changes of pace and emphasis. As Harry gradually elicits information from taciturn townspeople and the mysterious children themselves, he begins to doubt his very ability to absorb and process information. During a previous assignment, in Yugoslavia, he had, after being told of a similar religious vision, uncovered evidence of environmental contamination. Is the memory of that experience coloring his perception now? Or, perhaps more to the point, have the Cumbrian children's perceptions been altered by their exposure to radioactive particles? Unanswerable questions keep multiplying, in a complex, challenging narrative that thrusts Harry back and forth between past and present, his responsibilities as husband and father and his professional obligation to learn and tell the truth. A succession of biblical allusions (to the Cities of the Plain, Noah's Ark, Sodom and Gomorrah) and to Hieronymus Bosch's great painting The Garden of Earthly Delights are crucial building-blocks in this enigmatic novel's despairing revelations. Reminiscent of Doris Lessing's The Four-Gated City, and a highly interesting addition to Mosley's somber studies of contemporary moral failure and looming future shock. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.