A pacifist novel with a biographical (rather than autobiographical) foundation, in Testament of Experience, Brittain recalled its genesis: “In the autumn of 1939, I was summoned to a murder trial as a potential witness for the defense. The prisoner, a sensitive and intelligent professional man, had caused his wife’s death and then attempted suicide, but afterwards claimed that he could remember nothing of the tragedy. A team of psychological specialists traced back this amnesia to a bomb explosion in 1918, and my acquaintance was found “Guilty but Insane.”” The man was a Nottingham doctor, Leonard Lockhart, who gave Brittain permission to use his story, but later retracted it, requiring her to transform her protagonist into a musician and erase any traces of its origins. The novel was a bestseller in the UK, selling out its first print run of 50,000 copies ahead of publication (Poetry Foundation).