Whereas the core values of grace , enterprise and chivalry were crucial to the gentry 's idea of themselves , mr nicolson makes it clear that money and conflict were as important as blood and family .
But in early august she received a letter from ben nicolson , the 26-year-old art critic son of her close friend vita sackville-west , who was serving as a lance-bombardier in an anti-aircraft battery in kent under the flight-path of the german bombers .
As enemy warplanes passed low overhead , nicolson attacked the adulatory tone of woolf 's biography and accused fry of failing to engage with the political realities of the inter-war years .