Patrick Skene Catling

Wit & Wisdom

Final Demands

By

JR Books 259pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

Classical scholarship and showbiz chutzpah combine in Frederic Raphael’s stylish prose to bring his Adam Morris trilogy to a surprisingly sombre, heroic conclusion. The Glittering Prizes portrayed Adam and his ambitious contemporaries in Cambridge. Fame and Fortune showed their rise to professional success in London, even at the highest levels of media infighting. Final Demands is a scintillating depiction of the rewards and penalties for intellectual and sexual rivalry among the most ruthlessly talented of the Thatcher generation. As before, there are implications of moral seriousness beneath the flippancy; and the seriousness comes to the surface with increasing menace as time passes and the protagonists notice that they are not immortal.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'One of the reasons for its longevity is that it has virtually nothing to say about science and technology at all,… ,
    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    • Thirty-two years ago this month, we published Muriel Spark's short story, 'A Playhouse Called Remarkable' Read it… ,
    • Time travel, bicycles and white horses populate @WomackPhilip's roundup of children's books by @marcussedgwick,… ,
    Follow Us