Alexander Baron was the greatest British novelist of the last war and among the finest, most underrated, of the postwar period. He burst on the literary scene in 1948 with his debut novel, From The City, From The Plough, described by VS Pritchett as "the only war book that has conveyed any sense of reality to me'; and went on, through the 50s and 60s, to become a seminal London novelist, as well as pursuing a successful screenwriting career.