William Haley on Richard Aldington

“I have little to say in favour of Pinorman, and nothing in defence of the book about Lawrence. But Aldington wrote a book about the other Lawrence which is first-class. Death of a Hero was not the first of the books proclaiming the disillusion of the generation which fought the First World War but it was in the vanguard. And a man who has written such other novels as All Men are Enemies and Women Must Work; whose poems include A Fool i' the Forest and A Dream in the Luxembourg; who has one of the best single volumes on Voltaire to his credit; and whose other work ranges from French Studies and Reviews to translations of Alcestis and Fifty Romance Lyric Poems cannot be dismissed so easily.”

“It is true that the war occupies only the third part of the novel [Death of a Hero]. But it was perhaps the first of the "angry young men's" novels; it is fine one: and it is interesting to compare Aldington's picture of the pre-war generation with Sassoon's.”