Product Description

Simon Raven once described himself as "too intelligent not to be a rotter", precisely the sort of quip that has made him a thorn in the side of the establishment. Expelled from school, he "withdrew" from Cambridge and was lucky not to be drummed out of his regiment for "conduct unbecoming". Kind friends proffered whiskey and revolver, but like Evelyn Waugh's Captain Grimes, he declined to do the decent thing. Instead he pulled himself together and became a writer, the one profession from which "no degree whatever of moral or social disgrace" could debar him. From these inauspicious beginnings he has developed into one of Britain's most successful writers, with over 20 novels to his credit, many short stories and pieces of journalism, and television screenplays such as "Edward and Mrs. Simpson" and the Palliser novels. In this authorized biography Michael Barber draws on three sources to present his portrait of the artist: Raven's friends, his writings, and, most vivid of all, his conversation - pungent, pithy and politically-incorrect.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #532821 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 343 pages

Customer Reviews

A Gentleman Bounder
Simon Raven is not someone whose novels I have ever read, nor am I ever likely to read them, but having now read this biography, I feel I know quite a bit about this oddly out-of-time-sync person, who died in 1995.

Perhaps best known for his bisexual private life and his evasion of most burdens of duty, Raven achieved infamy in the 1950's for answering his estranged wife's telegram "Please send money. I and baby are starving" in this way: "Regret no funds. suggest eat baby"... At that time Raven was an officer in a seemingly rather lax County regiment, the Shropshire Light Infantry ( Shropshire Something, anyway), which regiment is now, I think, defunct. He had previously been expelled from his school, Charterhouse (the reasons are obvious) and left Cambridge under rather a cloud (various reasons).

Raven's devotions to the pursuit of girls and, more often, boys, eventually gave way to pursuit of winning at the horses and the green baize (mostly baccarat and chemin de fer). He usually lost. He also spent vast amounts dining out almost daily and on travel.

Raven wrote numerous novels based strongly on his own life and the things he knew best, but as a writer was probably best known for his adaptations for TV and film (including Unwin, Wittering and Zigo, which was filmed at my own school in Berkshire although set in Cornwall --and which flopped terminally-- and, above all, perhaps, for The Pallisers, based on Trollope.

In the end, Raven's endless cavortings cannot be compared to those of, say, Jeffrey Bernard (cf. Just The One): Raven somehow kept, pretty well and more as he aged, the outward and possibly inner accoutrements of that vanishing breed, The English Gentleman.