The Light and the Dark
The Light and the Dark is the fourth novel in C.P. Snow’s Strangers and Brothers series. Set in England in the lead-up to and during World War II, it portrays Lewis Eliot’s friendship with the gifted scholar and remarkable individual Roy Calvert, and Calvert’s inner turmoil and quest for meaning in life. Calvert was based on Snow’s friend, Coptic scholar, Charles Allberry. Their relationship is developed further in The Masters.
The novel portrays the tensions surrounding the build up to war and the sense of catastrophe so widespread in the 1930s.
