Valerie Grove
Still Lighting Up
SIMON GRAY HAS become his own best comic character, the fall guy in the drama of his own life – a big, rumpled, anxious-looking fellow, seething with anger or boiling with rage, chain-smoking and (until recently) imbibing ‘bottled inspiration’ from champagne or Glenfiddich, and always Eeyorishly expecting disaster. Every so often Gray delivers another account of the tribulations of a playwright’s life. The last one was subtitled ‘Confessions of a Paranoid’. Fat Chance was a cry of mordant anguish after Stephen Fry deserted his play Cell Mates, which died by contamination.
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
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad