Simon Raven

Simon Raven

Simon Arthur Noël Raven (1927 - 2001) was an English novelist, essayist, dramatist and raconteur who, in a writing career of forty years, caused controversy, amusement and offence. His obituary in "The Guardian" noted that, "he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh's Captain Grimes and the Earl of Rochester", and that he reminded Noel Annan, his Cambridge tutor, of the young Guy Burgess [ Barber, Guardian obit.] .

Among the many things said about him, perhaps the most quoted was that he had "the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel" [ This quote was given prominence on many of the paperback editions of the novels, to promote sales] . E W Swanton called Raven's cricket memoir "Shadows in the Grass" "the filthiest cricket book ever written" [ To which Raven is said to have responded: "Can I quote you on that, Jim?" (Brooke Allen article)] . He has also been called "cynical" and "cold-blooded", his characters "guaranteed to behave badly under pressure; most of them are vile without any pressure at all" [ DT obituary quoted by Martin in NY Times obit.] . His unashamed credo was "a robust eighteenth-century paganism....allied to a deep contempt for the egalitarian code of post-war England" [ Brooke Allen article]

Biography

Birth, family and education

He was born on 28 December 1927 [ The place of his birth is not recorded; it may have been London, or Hunstanton, or Sunningdale, or elsewhere. See "The Captain" p19] , the eldest of three children. His father, Arthur Raven, had inherited a fortune from the family's hosiery business, and lived an idle life of leisure [Brooke Allen article] . His mother Esther, nee Christmas, a baker's daughter, was a noted distance and cross-country athlete who represented England against France in March 1932 [ She became the second-fastest woman in England over 3 miles during the 1930s, with a time of 20'18", succeeding her younger sister Ruth] . He was educated, first at Cordwalles preparatory school near Camberley, then as a scholarship pupil at Charterhouse, from which he was expelled in 1945 for homosexual activities [Michael Barber, The Captain. It is said that the stress of expelling Raven turned headmaster Robert Birley's hair grey] - this despite his cricketing and scholastic prowess. Amongst his school contemporaries were James Prior, William Rees-Mogg, Oliver Popplewell [Popplewell, who became a High Court judge, became briefly famous in June 1998 when, during a case involving sprinter Linford Christie he asked: "What is Linford's lunchbox?"] and Peter May. After completing national service he entered King's College, Cambridge in 1948, to read English.

Initially he was a brilliant student. After graduation he was awarded a Studentship (graduate fellowship) to study the influence of the classics in Victorian schooling, but this soon gave way to pleasure-seeking and his thesis was never seriously addressed. [Martin, NY Times; Brooke Allen article] In 1951, he married Susan Kilner, a graduate from Newnham who was expecting his child; the marriage was from duty, as he made clear, and afterwards, he studiously avoided her. [Barber, Guardian obit] A son, Adam, was born in 1952. He received a wire from his estranged wife: "Wife and baby starving send money soonest," and sent the reply: "Sorry no money suggest eat baby". (The couple divorced in 1957.) Raven, his scholarship funds exhausted, withdrew from King's, [ Hughes obituary says he was sent down for "terminal lassitude".] and attempted to earn a living as a writer, gaining a small income as book reviewer for "The Listener". He also wrote a novel, which proved unpublishable because of its libellous nature, and only emerged almost 30 years later as "An Inch of Fortune". Seeking a firmer livelihood, Raven decided to rejoin the army.

Army

During his National Service, Raven had served as an officer cadet in the Parachute Regiment, and was based in India during the final months of the Raj. He was subsequently commissioned into the Oxfordshire and Bucks Light Infantry, before being seconded to the 77th Heavy Ack Ack (Artillery) Regiment at Rolleston Balloon Camp, where he saw out his service. ["The Captain", p93] In 1953, after his King's College experiences, he secured a regular commission with the King's Own Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI), serving in Germany and Kenya, before receiving a home posting to Shrewsbury. Unfortunately, this enabled him to pursue his passion for gambling at the local race meetings, and he was soon in severe financial straits. Faced with the prospect of a court-martial for "conduct unbecoming" he was allowed to resign quietly, to avoid scandal in the regiment [Barber, Guardian obit; Hughes, Independent obit] .

Writing career

At almost 30 he had no career or prospects, but from his studies of the classics he had developed a lucid writing style. This, allied to his ready and disrespectful wit, was allowing him to survive precariously in journalism when, in 1958, he was employed by publisher Anthony Blond: "I had picked him up through Hugh Thomas who was editing a symposium for me, called "The Establishment". Simon was billed to do the piece on the Army". Blond financed him while he wrote his first published novel, "The Feathers of Death" (1959). Blond was impressed enough to offer him a contract to continue writing for him, on condition he lived away from London, and paid off Raven's debts. "This is the last hand-out you get," he was told. "Leave London, or leave my employ". He moved to lodgings in Deal, on the Kent coast, and was paid (reportedly) a £15 wage by Blond. [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/01/db0101.xml Obituary] of Anthony Blond, "Daily Telegraph", March 1, 2008. Retrieved on 4 March 2008.] As a consequence of this arrangement, during the remainder of his working life, Raven became one of Britain's most prolific writers in a range of genres including fiction, essays, personal reminiscences, polemics, theatre, screenplays and magazine journalism. He was at various times compared with Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Anthony Powell and Lawrence Durrell, but his voice was his own: "Raven came nearer than other novelists to exposing, in the grandeur of its squalor and the dubiety of its standards, the times he lived in and saw through" [Hughes, Independent obit] . His own view of his craft was less exalted; in the words of his writer-character Fielding Gray in the novel "Places Where They Sing" (1970): "I arrange words in pleasing patterns in order to make money" [Quoted by Martin, NY Times obit] .

His mischievous and often cruel delight in the outrageous, and his lack of moralising or sentiment, are characteristics which pervade his writings. He also had a fascination for the supernatural, first manifested in his early novel "Doctors Wear Scarlet", which features Balkan vampires and was cited by Karl Edward Wagner as one of the thirteen best supernatural novels [N G Christakos: "Three by Thirteen: The Karl Edward Wagner Lists" in "Black Prometheus: A Critical Study of Karl Edward Wagner" ed. Benjamin Szumskyj, Gothic Press, 2007] . The Gothic themes became stronger in later works such as "The Roses of Picardie", "September Castle", parts of the "First-Born of Egypt" sequence [Howard Watson observes, in his article "The Gothic World of Simon Raven" (Dark Horizon, 2001) that by the seventh and final book of the "First-Born" sequence, the "extraordinary and absurd had become a regular, feature of the author's oeuvre] , and the 1994 novella "The Islands of Sorrow".

The listing of Raven's works, shown below, indicates a life of considerable industry, sustained for many years. Although he acquired an enthusiastic and loyal following, he was never a top-seller in terms of the mass market. Quoted by Brooke Allen: "I've always written for a small audience of people like myself, who are well-educated, worldly, sceptical and snobbish (meaning that they rank good taste over bad)".

His "Alms for Oblivion" ten-novel sequence is usually regarded as his best achievement - A. N. Wilson thought it "the jolliest roman-fleuve" [Literally, "stream-novel". Wilson is quoted from Hughes, The Independent] - though it is likely that he gained wider public recognition for his TV work, especially the adaptation of "The Pallisers" (1974) and "Edward and Mrs Simpson" (1978). As he grew older his rate of output lessened, and there was deterioration in its quality [Brooke Allen article] , but he was still being published in the late 1990s, his last book being "Remember Your Grammar and Other Haunted Stories", 1997, a collection of short ghost and supernatural stories.

In 1990 his book of anecdotes and reminiscences, "Is there anybody there? said the Traveller" (Frederick Muller 1990) had been withdrawn in the face of a series of libel threats, including a suit from his former publisher Anthony Blond. [Blond,in a postscript to Hughes's Independent obit, says he was awarded £3000] Thereafter he planned, or at least threatened, to write a new work "All Safely Dead", in which, safe from the laws of libel, he could "expose" various deceased luminaries from the British social, academic, political and literary scenes, but the book was never written. [Hughes, The Independent]

Later life

Throughout his life Raven pursued a hedonistic lifestyle which included eating, drinking, travel, cricket, gambling and socialising. He spent what he earned, and after 34 years in Kent at Blond's behest he finally moved to London on securing lodgings in Sutton's Hospital, an almshouse for impoverished Carthusians in Charterhouse Square. Here he led a quieter version of his former life. In 1993 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1997 he appeared with Melvyn Bragg in a South Bank Show devoted to his career, in good spirits and without regrets. His health continued to fail, however, and after a series of strokes [On cause of death, Martin says this was "not announced", but both Barber and Hughes refer to strokes] he died in London on 12 May 2001,aged 73. A biography of Simon Raven, "The Captain", written by Michael Barber, was published in 1996.

His son, Adam Raven, managed to build a successful career as an artist, despite having been diagnosed, at 25, with a bipolar disorder. On 22 June 2006 he was discovered dead in his cabin aboard a cruise liner, at the age of 54.

A List of Works by Simon Raven

Novels

1. Early Novels

4. Other Novels He also wrote features and articles for: "The Listener"; "Encounter"; "London Magazine"; "Spectator"; "New Statesman" and other magazines and journals

Plays, Screenplays, TV and Film Adaptations

Plays (this table is not necessarily complete)
*"Royal Foundation and Other Plays", Anthony Blond 1966

Screenplays, TV and Film Adaptations (this table is not necessarily complete)

Note: The US title for "Incense of the Damned" was: "Bloodsuckers"

ee also

*List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors

References

ources

*Brooke Allen: Who Was Simon Raven: "The New Criterion, April 2003" (on http://newcriterion.com:81/archive/21/apr03/raven.htm)
*Michael Barber: The Captain: The Life and Times of Simon Raven, "Gerald Duckworth, 1996" ISBN 0715627864
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,491484,00.html Obituary] , "The Guardian", 16 May 2001 by Michael Barber
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20010516/ai_n14396624 Obituary] , "The Independent", 16 May 2001 by David Hughes
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html Obituary] , "The New York Times" 17 May 2001 by Douglas Martin
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article1207629.ece Obituary] , "The Independent" 1 August 2006 obit of Adam Raven by Thomas Thirkell
*Simon Raven Filmography from http://us.vdc.imdb.com
*http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/introduces/simonraven.htm


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