Simon Raven

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The cover of a collection of Simon Raven's writing, published in 2002

Simon Arthur Noël Raven (December 28, 1927, Virginia Water, Surrey, England – May 12, 2001, London) was a novelist, journalist and dramatist. His obituary in 'The Guardian' noted that, "he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh's Captain Grimes and the Earl of Rochester."

1 Biography
2 Novels
3 Drama
4 See also
5 Reference
6 External links

[edit] Biography

He attended first Cordwalles preparatory school and then Charterhouse, from which he was expelled for "the usual thing" (having sex with one of the other schoolboys)^[1]. It is said that the stress of expelling Raven turned headmaster Robert Birley's hair grey. After national service in the Parachute Regiment, during which he was sent as an officer cadet to Bangalore and commissioned, Raven arrived, in 1948, to read English at King's College, Cambridge.

In 1951, he married Susan Kilner, a fellow undergraduate who was expecting his child; afterwards, he studiously avoided her, and they were divorced in 1957. In one well-known incident he received a wire from his estranged wife reading "Wife and baby starving send money soonest," and sent the reply: "Sorry no money suggest eat baby."

After failing to submit a single word of his fellowship thesis, he withdrew from King's, and, desperate to flee "the pram in the hall", successfully applied for a regular army commission. He spent three years in the King's Own Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI) in Germany and Kenya, where he set up a brothel for his men, and was sent home to be training officer at Shrewsbury.

Alas, officers in the KSLI were expected to represent the regiment at local race meetings - a prescription to go bankrupt, which, within a year, Simon did. The regiment cared more for its good name than for army regulations, and he was quietly allowed to resign rather than face a court-martial for conduct unbecoming.

[edit] Novels

His major work was a series of ten novels under the umbrella title Alms for Oblivion. The novels cover the period 1945 to 1973 and centre on a group of upper and upper middle class characters. They can be considered a novel sequence, if a somewhat loosely structured one.

The early novels are robust satires of the English upper set of the mid 1950s, but the later tend to a more detached and philosophical tone. The later novels become more concerned with the occult and supernatural, and include strange happenings, though this was a feature of Raven's work early in his career (eg with the early novel 'Doctors Wear Scarlet' which features Balkan vampires).

The titles in Alms for Oblivion are:

The Rich Pay Late (1964)
Friends in Low Places (1965)
The Sabre Squadron (1966)
Fielding Gray (1967, but the first by internal chronology)
The Judas Boy (1968)
Places Where They Sing (1970)
Sound the Retreat (1971)
Come Like Shadows (1972)
Bring Forth the Body (1974)
The Survivors (1976)

He followed that with the seven-volume series The First-Born of Egypt.

Morning Star (1984)
The Face of the Waters (1985)
Before the Cock Crow (1986)
New Seed for Old (1988)
Blood of My Bone (1989)
In the Image of God (1990)
The Troubadour (1992)

[edit] Drama

The Pallisers, a 22-episode adaptation for the BBC of all six Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope, first broadcast in 1974.
Edward and Mrs Simpson, acclaimed 7 episode drama for ITV, first broadcast in 1978.