The World of Simon Raven

Book excerpt: Although he gained fame with his classic novel series, Alms for Oblivion, which chronicled the misdeeds of English society in the 1950s and 60s, Simon Raven is also recognized as a brilliant travel writer, an unblinking reporter of the seamier side of English upper-class life, and a hilarious commentator on the sexual mores of gay London. His demise in 2001 robbed English letters of one of its most colorful characters. 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. He was said to possess “the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel,” and this selection of his writing contains a magnificent array of pieces on army life, sex, school days, and travel. The quality of his writing and his fearless descriptions of the habits of the English, and indeed of all mankind, will come as a revelation.