Francis King
Mussel Man
BORN IN 1912, the author of this autobiography has had not merely a long and adventurous life but also, as he repeatedly makes clear, a remarkably enjoyable one. Even Coldrtz, where he was incarcerated after he was taken prisoner during the St-Nazaire raid, failed to oppress him. This ability to transcend the most unpromising situations, whether circumstantial or emotional, was due, one suspects, in part to natural high spirits and in part to a refusal to subject either his own feelings or those of others to excessive scrutiny. Because of that refusal, and despite being an excellent journalist and biographer and a poet sadly underrated today, he never quite had the equipment to make it as a novelist.
Born into an upper-middle-class family in which demonstrations of emotion were sternly repressed, Burn progressed from Winchester to Oxford on a classical scholarship. While there, he ghost-wrote the autobiography of the motoring ace Tim Birkin, and
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw