This was Henry's passion, his religion, if you like, his obsession: the England that was, and must one day be again. With quiet sicerity he loved his country, the texture of its earth, the very salt of the sea that washed it. He was not blind to the deterioration which, since the war, had charged the structure of the national life. Yet this could only be, must only be, a temporary aftermath of that Homeric struggle. England would rise again.

A. J. Cronin