During the 1950s he continued to work for The Observer, and was one of the more prominent intellectual figures in British life (perhaps to be compared with Edmund Wilson in the United States, for example[citation needed]).
Mr. Auden is even reported to have claimed that these books were as good as War and Peace; Edwin Muir and many others were almost equally enthusiastic.
And for me this had a reassuring outcome, for most of his more ardent supporters were soon beginning to sell out their shares in Professor Tolkien, and today those books have passed into a merciful oblivion.
He had become increasingly concerned about ecological matters and this, along with his own ideological temperament, led him to the controversial decision to set up a self-sufficient farming community.
The community quickly became a commune when Toynbee, Sally and their youngest daughter moved out into a large cottage nearby.
Nonetheless, Toynbee and Sally continued to have a great deal of contact with the communards, and along with both spouses' active alcoholism, it frequently caused considerable tension in their marriage.
At that time they knew Lucian Freud, Donald Maclean and Robert Kee, Henrietta Moraes and others from David Tennant's Gargoyle Club in Soho.
Toynbee was later to be found, with Benedict Nicolson, in the Wednesday Club consisting of raffish male writers, artists and journalists.
[5] As a foreign correspondent with The Observer, Philip then traveled to Tel Aviv, where he met Sally, who was a secretary for the American Embassy there.