Larry Ryan

Double Trouble

Curtain Call

By

Jonathan Cape 327pp £12.99 order from our bookshop

Times are good for Stephen Wyley. He’s a society portraitist in 1930s London, regarded by some as ‘the British Sargent’, with a marriage, children and an inheritance to fall back on. ‘The Life of Wyley’ is a friend’s arch description. Stephen recognises his membership of a fortunate interwar generation: born late enough to avoid the Great War and subsequently able to take up a place at Oxford left vacant by those called up. ‘Wyley had been lucky in most things, and had learned not to mind being resented for it.’ 

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