The World of Simon Raven

Once famous above all for his classic novel series about the misdeeds of English society in the 1950s and 1960s, "Alms for Oblivion", Simon Raven is now also recognized as a travel writer, a reporter at large of the seamier side of English upper-class life, and a commentator on the sexual mores of gay London. Expelled from Charterhouse "for the usual thing"; he was for a time, an officer in the British Army; he gambled heavily on the horses for years, was often in debt, drank too much and had a rich and uncommonly varied sex life. But what distinguished him was, as was said, "he had the mind of a cad but the pen of an angel". This selection of his journalism contains an array of pieces on army life, cricket (another obsession), sex, school days and travel.