First published in 1939 and dominated by the shadow of the Second World War, Coming up for Air finds fat, middle-aged and unhappily-married George Bowling trying to revisit the world of his Edwardian childhood in rural Oxforshire, only to discover that the certainties of his past are dead and that a very different future is looming up to claim him. This new edition includes an introduction and extensive end-notes, and an appendix containing original responses to the novel as well as letters and documents from the period in which it was written.