The art of the Neo-Romantics was tied to no single style, yet this group of twentieth-century British artists has a unifying spirit which is clearly recognizable.

The movement was inaugurated by Paul Nash, John Piper and Graham Sutherland and a new generation of painters subsequently came to represent their ideals -among them Michael Ayrton, John Minton, Keith Vaughan, John Craxton, Robert Colquhoun and Prunella Clough. Landscape became a vehicle for the projection of their emotions, and their works came to exemplify that confused period encompassing the Second World War.

Malcolm Yorke argues that these painters must be considered in the context of the growth of English romanticism as a whole from William Blake and Samuel Palmer onwards. In this first major study of a group of artists now increasingly in vogue the author examines their work against the social conditions of the time, and also explores how it related to other art forms, especially literature.