the english writers stephen spender and christopherisherwood were the most politically outspoken, framing the most urgent threats in ways that provide a distant mirror to our own concerns and evolving sense of alarm. collectively, they and their cohort were known as the auden generation. that's a picture of them. steven's the tall one. auden's in the chair -- no, on the bench. so these writers came of age in a time of an increasingly assertive working class. in our times we decalculate income inequality -- debate income inequality. we live in the shadow of 9/11 and the endless war on terror. soon after they left university, many of the justifications for the great war and how it was conducted fell apart. we learned there was never any link between al-qaeda and saddam hussein, nor any weapons of mass destruction in iraq. all of them witnessed firsthand the rise of hitler in germany and fascism in europe. we are seeing similarly ominous developments. auden declared in 1937 a writer's duty is to make action urgent and its nature clear. what duty or urgent action did they take? what action do