Patrick Skene Catling
Wit & Wisdom
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.
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'When the language starts functioning as a character in fiction, when it is there drawing attention to itself ... It’s not anything that anybody really takes seriously.'
Our interview with Anthony Burgess from 1983.
http://ow.ly/5u0y50yrjoO
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire