the London Blitz, a work that has been commented on by several literary critics. He later re-used this novel, to form the middle section of A Dream Journey (1976). Hanley had initially planned on turning No Directions into a trilogy. War also has a role in several of his post Second World War novels, including Emily (1948), The Closed Harbour (1952), and Levine (1956). The eponymous protagonist of Emily meets her husband, who is on leave after spending four years away fighting the Japanese in Burma, at Paddington Station. Their home and all their possessions were destroyed in the Blitz, while it has "mentally shattered" their elder son. The Closed Harbour is set in Marseilles during World War II, after Germany's defeat of France, and the protagonist Eugene Marius has lost a ship in a minefield, and all but one of his crew, including his nephew drowned. As a result of this he has lost his captain's ticket and cannot find work. After months of unemployment Marius eventually descends into madness. Levine is set in Poland during the same war and Levine witnesses the murder of his mother and abduction of his sister by invading soldiers. Subsequently he becomes a sailor. Then he is shipwrecked and spends time in an internment camp in southern England, before escaping. Levine then encounters Grace, who has been freed from her controlling parents when they are killed by a German bomb. This novel, like The Closed Harbour and many of Hanley's novels, has a tragic climax, with Levine murdering Grace. Edward Stokes also notes that two post-war short stories collections, Crilley and Other Stories (1945) and A Walk in the Wilderness (1950), deal with the impact of war on peoples lives. Works set in Wales Hanley lived a large part of his writing life, from 1931 until 1963, in Wales, and wrote several works with a Welsh setting and subject matter. The first full length work was Grey Children: A Study in Humbug and Misery (1937). The subject matter of this non-fiction work, unemployment in industrial South Wales, though has more in common with Hanley’s novels of the 1930s about the struggles of working class Liverpudleians. In genre Grey Children belongs with George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier, published earlier in 1937. However, Hanley lived in Wales for over twenty years before he wrote at length about rural Wales, where he lived. This came