Description
Book Synopsis"We had been instructed to start promptly at six, since the hall was needed again at eight. We pushed through the curtained doorway, like instrumentalists without instruments, and onto the stepped stage. The audience was still coming in. Uncertain of our running time, and with no one to introduce us, I thought we had better start. I got as far as 'Byr - ' when Alan decided he did indeed need his glasses. He delivered his rehearsed ad lib, claiming that his vanity was second only to Byron's, and put on his specs." It is July 1981, and Alan Bates succumbs to a fit of nerves as he and Frederic Raphael attempt to carry off an underrehearsed performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. This wry glimpse behind the scenes of the London literary scene sits, in Raphael's notebooks, amid clear-eyed analysis of the riots and social unrest then erupting in Britain's cities under Margaret Thatcher's government. Compulsively readable, by turns mischievous and coruscating, this latest volume of Raphael's reflections casts light on a period that saw the beginnings of a decisive shift in British and American culture. Along the way, there are finely incised pen-portraits of public figures ranging from Shirley Conran to Peter Sellers and from Robert Redford to Mary Whitehouse.
Trade Review"Shrewd, funny, gossipy and elegantly written, it combines rueful self-analysis with perceptive and, one suspects, all too accurate character assessments of well-known contemporaries, together with musings on Lord Byron, drama in ancient Greece and the state of the nation under Thatcher." --Jeremy Lewis, Literary Review "This is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Diaries promise indiscretions, and the joy of gossip... Is it right to invoke Pepys or Evelyn? When Personal Terms have concluded they will prove to be Raphael's lasting work, so perhaps it is." -- Wynn Wheldon, Spectator "There are entries in this fifth volume of Raphael's notebooks that would sound profound in any grove of academe, some one-liners that would now be perfectly fit for Twitter, some that are permissibly snarky comments on colleagues and rivals, and some that smartly pocket the small coin of everyday living. And that's only to pitch the first few pages to you ... read on at random for the full variety and vitality of Raphael's genius for recording the primary sources of a rich writing life." --"Times "on "Ifs and Buts"
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1979 1980 1981 Index
