Discusses the way in which Dark negotiated the tensions of freedom versus control in her writing while she was subjected both to national surveillance and local right-wing intimidation in the 1940s and 1950s. Examines to what extend Dark's relationship with the security forces, and local political pressures, influenced her writing, and what Dark's experience tells us about the intellectual and cultural pressures of the period. Argues that the pressures assisted in steering Dark away from writing about contemporary issues, and made her retreat into the genre of the historical novel.