Francis King
Mussel Man
Turned Towards The Sun
By Michael Burn
Michael Russell 320pp £20
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 followed this with a history of Brooklands. After that, he decided to quit the
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
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk