Amnesty International is Marmite.
It is a UK charity that defends human rights internationally. It spent about £2 million in this endeavour in 2021. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes, and Amnesty has come in for plenty of criticism over the years. However, I put my prejudice aside and spent £7.50 on four books in the Amnesty shop on King Street, Hammersmith. One of them is the author’s first book, published in 1977.
The others are by Kingsley Amis, CP Snow and Elizabeth Jane Howard (again). The last of hers, Getting It Right, was a disappointment and I’m hoping for better this time. First novels are a mixed bag. Some authors hit their stride and carry on. Others stall and don’t write much more. I’m thinking of JD Salinger and Harper Lee: Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird. Some make a slow start but improve, as they say in racing circles: The Pot Hunters, PG Wodehouse, 1902.
Last year, thanks to the generous intervention of a friend, I was in the front row at The Travellers’ sitting between Selina Hastings and AN Wilson. I forbore to mention I had not read anything by either of them but I enjoyed meeting Selina, a scion of the Earls of Huntingdon. To slightly digress, just taking in a bit of sail and adjusting our course temporarily, the Hastings family are of great antiquity. The current earls are of the seventh Creation, – no mean feat – their title was created in 1529 and the current holder is the 17th Earl. The first Creation was in 1065. In the 19th century there was a tendency to design coats of arms with complex quarterings resembling a Victorian tiled floor. Simplicity denotes antiquity and the Hastings’ arms are an admirable example: argent, a maunch sable. “A maunch (from the French manche “sleeve”) is an heraldic charge representing a detachable lady’s sleeve with a wide pendulous cuff, as was fashionable amongst women in the 13th and 14th centuries.” (Wikipedia)
Now to get back on course. I did not actually speak to AN Wilson but I liked to think others in the room might have assumed us to be chums. Nor, as I say, had I read any of his books. I am rectifying the omission and enjoying The Sweets of Pimlico hugely. “A witty novel of manners … told by a writer with a rare narrative gift”, opines The Daily Telegraph. What hokum; novels of manners are two a penny, wit is not unusual and a narrative gift is hardly rare in the canon of Eng. Lit. The Observer captures AN better: “A very talented, assured and intriguing new English writer”. The blurb on the back gushes salaciously: “AN Wilson’s baroquely sparkling first novel leads the reader down paths of trickery, lust and greed to the heart of a conundrum”. Well, whatever …
1949 was a vintage year for British films: Whisky Galore!, Kind Hearts and Coronets and Passport to Pimlico.