The Oxbridge reveller

Simon Raven is an author better known for his life than his writings. The author of many novels - including the Alms for Oblivion cycle - plus numerous works of non-fiction and an impressive set of television screenplays retains our curiosity primarily because he was an intellectual Terry-Thomas.

Raven is the man in the open-topped sports tourer, heading speedily for the coast with an unsuitable companion in tow, trailing clouds of debt behind him.

This was the man who was banned from living within a 50-mile radius of London by his publisher, so that he might better concentrate on the matter of working.

He was fascinated by the particularly British hierarchies of public school, Oxbridge and the Army, and delighted in the intricacies and subtle shadings of behaviour inherent within them.

However, he had very little time for what he considered to be intrusions on his private enjoyment of life within these institutions. As a result, he retreated from all three in disgrace, whether sexual or financial.

Raven's holy trinity serves as the basis for most of the material in this book. His schooldays would appear to have been largely idyllic, spent as they were immersed in three adored pastimes - cricket, the classics, and epics of masturbation.

King's College, Cambridge, provided another Elysian field upon which to canter, although the cantering took on a darker tone as his debts to bookmakers piled up at the same time as his academic aspirations took a tumble at the last. The pattern was repeated in the Army.

What is delightful about Raven's various reminiscences collected in this book is that they are delivered without rancour or squealing. The author was well aware of his weaknesses, and revelled in them at the same time as suffering from acute guilt at his failure to at least act like a gent.

There is darkness here as well. The homosexual life in postwar Britain was not a salubrious one, and Army life struggles to achieve any remote form of grace under pressure.

The other great distinguishing mark of Raven's prose is the wonderful chasm which opens up between his often exquisitely rendered prose and the scurrilous antics it is harnessed to describe.