The Road to Excelsior Lodge

the long version

Making use of newly available material, Lester aims to rectify the post-war neglect of Leslie Halward, and offers a fresh assessment of his work. It examines Halward's early fictional writings when in Birmingham and the trajectory of the second half of his career as an author when he went to live in the Worcestershire countryside, and the dilemma felt in his break with the native working class sources of his inspiration, encapsulated in his radio play, which gives this study its title, Afternoon at Excelsior Lodge. This essay of Lester's is part of a series he has done on British working-class writers.