Horizon Magazine and European Culture, 1940–1945

Abstract

For the first four and a half years of its life, from 1940 to 1945, Cyril Connolly’s cosmopolitan, British-based magazine Horizon operated under wartime conditions. This not only entailed dealing with shortages of paper and the absence of many potential domestic contributors on active service, but also difficulties obtaining new material from abroad and engaging in exchange with foreign periodicals. Yet during its wartime existence, Horizon nevertheless engaged regularly with foreign and especially European literature and culture. Moreover, its pages hosted varied debates on what European culture might mean and what the place of Britain and of the writer and intellectual was within a wider European cultural framework. This article scrutinises the European dimension of Horizon and approaches it both within the context of wartime conditions, and in relation to the particular brand of elite cosmopolitanism espoused by Connolly and many of his contributors.