In the last eight years of his life and he died when he was only thirty-three Denton Welch wrote three novels, umpteen short stories, hundreds of poems, and between 1942 and 1948, a profoundly personal and moving journal that recorded his swift maturity into a writer of genius. Therein he wrote of his battle with ill-health, his life lived in claustrophobic rooms, and (in frank, erotic terms) his frustrated pursuit of the ideal friend. And yet he encountered some of the foremost writers of his time Edith Sitwell, Herbert Read, Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville West and recorded every aspect of life with a fresh and arresting sensitivity.