It is puzzling that David Pryce-Jones’s memoirs have not found an English publisher and have been limited to a paperback edition issued by an American magazine. Perhaps they seemed too privileged for these populist days. The oddity and poignancy of his story, the spry elegance of his prose, the angular and implacable cleverness of his ideas and the brusque Etonian confidence of his dealings with people make for a strange and haunting book. 

David is the only child of Alan Pryce-Jones and Thérèse (‘Poppy’) Fould-Springer. Extracts from his father’s diaries of 1926–39, recently published under the title Devoid of Shyness by the excellent Stone Trough Books, can profitably be read in tandem with Fault Lines. Alan was the grandson of a draper who