Bogarde left Chelsea in a 'welter of second hand grief, anxiety, and something which was rapidly approaching self-pity', and returned home to rural Sussex, itself emblematic of the 'lost England' of the neo-romantic painters of the period. Although H. S. Williamson, Head Master at Chelsea, wrote to Ulric of 'the promise of your son's work, and his unusual facility of invention', Bogarde, 'lost, worried and disconnected', realised that ‘I would never be a successful painter, for the simple reason that I did not want to be. I had no dedication but a totally God-given talent which I truthfully wished could be directed towards the main love of my life: the Theatre.' As Coldstream remarked, the debate was 'not all that serious - the theatre had already got to him’.

With the outbreak of war, the 18-year-old Bogarde joined a repertory company in Amersham, where he met Anthony Forwood, then a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and occasional theatrical agent, who would later share his life for forty years. Forwood secured Bogarde a part in Diversion No. 2, a revue at Wyndham's Theatre. It was during the longueurs backstage that Bogarde returned to his art. His sketchbook, begun in February 1941, not only exhibits the influence of his tutors, but also indicates that he had not yet exorcised his obsession with the First World War. His scenes of blitzed London recall Moore's wartime work in the city's Underground shelters, while his dark landscapes hint at Sutherland's gothic renderings of rural England. But many are images from an earlier war - his father's. One picture seems to show a group of soldiers in an exploding shell-hole, as though literally in Hell; another depicts what he calls a 'set for "Carnage", an imaginary ballet'; yet another is entitled simply 'Ypres, 1918'.