In the following years, he employed a new generation of writers to contribute to the publications, including Osbert Lancaster, Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Sacheverell Sitwell, P. Morton Shand and (from 1930) John Betjeman; during the Second World War, Nikolaus Pevsner assisted, while J. M. Richards was serving in the armed forces. Hastings was known to have had difficult working relationships with some of these young writers he employed. Betjeman's relationship with Hastings was largely amicable, though at times, as Hasting's Telegraph obituary states, "Betjeman was openly impatient of the petty rules imposed by the management" and nicknamed him "Old Obscurity".
