Alms for Oblivion Vol. I.

Alms for Oblivion

by Simon Raven

Alms for Oblivion is a series of ten novels, all telling separate stories but at the same time linked together by the characters they have in common: schoolboys and businessmen, writers and soldiers, prostitutes and patient wives, actresses and models. In the first four novels Raven's wayward band of upper-class anti-heroes lurch from debauched parties to rehearsals for nuclear war; from blackmail to murder; from marriage to adultery and back again.





Volume 1: The Rich Pay Late, Friends in Low Places, The Sabre Squadron and Fielding Gray

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Humor, Literature, Comedy

884 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 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.

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". E W Swanton called Raven's cricket memoir Shadows on the Grass "the filthiest cricket book ever written". 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". His unashamed credo was "a robust eighteenth-century paganism....allied to a deep contempt for the egalitarian code of post-war England"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_R...

Reviews

[Whitmarsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first review here, only because I can't believe no-one's done one.

I read the Vintage edition of Vol 1 and halfway through ordered the other two. I can't believe these aren't better known. The whole series is 10 short novels of 200 pages each showing an interweaving cast of characters from post WW2 to the mid 60s in Britain. Raven is described as writing like an angel but thinking like a cad, but he is so much richer and more rounded than that. Each novel is in a different literary style, from first person teenage diary to world-shattering detective fiction.

The best description I can think of is a cross between the historical veracity of James Ellroy's American Tabloid series, the characters of Evelyn Waugh and the gleeful bitterness of Edward St Aubyn's series. Hugely enjoyable, brilliantly written and a great explanation of post war, post Empire Britain.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fielding Gray by Simon Raven
10 out of 10


Fielding Gray is a phenomenal Magnum opus and furthermore, it is just the first of a series of ten volumes that will surely have offered an exhilarating joy by the time this reader will be finished with them – Insha’Allah, covid permitting – perhaps this time next year, for this being such a blissful, enchanting read, it will not be taken all in one gulp and Delay Gratification – as in the two pies test which you can find on the internet, together with the intriguing results – will be applied here and other, probably less spectacular books will be interposed between the other parts of the fabulous Alms for Oblivion.

This superb chef d’oeuvre has been compared with the magnificent A Dance to the Music of Time by the glorious Anthony Powell aka ‘The English Proust’, absorbed by yours truly with such enthusiasm, gratitude and elation that it will have to be taken on again, once the 1,000 Books that Everyone Must Read will have been finished – well, more or less, for there are some names and subjects there that will be left aside and quite a good number of challenges that will have been abandoned after the first chapters, because they will not have agreed with this fussy, flimsy, capricious reader-and not just because both Alms for Oblivion and The Dance to the Music of Time have so many volumes, but given that they both paint an impressive fresco of English society, Simon Raven apparently taking on a swipe at both higher and lower classes… http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/07/h...
Fielding Gray is the hero of this and we are to understand the following five or six installments and albeit he is complex in his sexual inclinations, or perhaps he is yet unsure of them – he does say though at one point that since there are no women, or the lotus pleasures – in which the lotus might be the feminine sexual organ – in his vicinity or available at school, he explores with men and maybe he is bisexual, or just had a fling with a boy – he seems just as interesting as Less, the protagonist of Less by Andrew Sean Greer http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/04/l... and if the under signed is generally reading ‘conservative books’, where the hero is straight –the feminine personages could be lesbians, that might even increase the interest – because in this manner the reader can identify with him and imagine having the same experiences, sexual quests, erotic pleasures are shared, still, Fielding Gray is such a charming, enticing character that following up his adventures was and will be in the following episodes an exquisite enchantment and instinctual pleasure.

The hero is a student that appears to shine and will be destined to continue at Cambridge, before events in his life will have changed that course, first due to his affair with Christopher Roland, a colleague that the protagonist sees as ‘pure and innocent’, but he does not love the other young man and this will have disastrous consequences, coupled as it would be with the vicious attitude and acts of other personages, mainly Mrs. Gray, Fielding’s own mother, and the frailty, depression of Christopher that is infatuated with the hero and when his feelings appear to be rejected the confused boy would take some drastic steps, first waiting for men outside barracks, where his apparent solicitation attracts the attention and then a complaint is sent to the police – in those days, at the end and after World War II, homosexuality was punished by the law – then Christopher Roland is excluded from school and a tragedy takes place – let us avoid spoiler alerts and leave it at that…

The father of the main character is one of the villains of the story that will depart from the stage quite soon, Alhamdulillah, but not before entangling his own son in a quite vicious scheme, involving a man, Mr. Tuck, that has arrived from India, British colony at the time, where he works at a tea plantation that needs men and capital, both of which he presumes he will obtain from Mr. Gray, since the latter is so determined to compromise the scholarly future of his offspring, given that he thinks studying Greek and Latin and for that matter anything that is not ‘practical’ is a waste of time and his money (although this is in fact inherited and he has done nothing to add to the fortune given to him), that he is more than ready to dispatch the one who dreams of Cambridge to the tea plantation where he can work for a living.
Fielding is quite attracted to Mrs. Tuck, the one who treats her husband with disdain and would reveal to the hero the fact that her father had been involved in embezzlement and thus made her position untenable and she took the revolting man as her spouse, sharing his interest nonetheless in getting Mr. Gray to invest in the plantation and his son to come there, because these would bring pecuniary benefits…since she is stuck with…Tuck, why then, she should make the best of it and have a comfortable arrangement – she is anyway not faithful to the one that may in fact prompt her to do whatever it takes, sexual acts, entrapment, and the protagonist would discover that the father that talks so much about what one needs to do is in fact trapped in the shenanigans of the couple that want him to give them the money, more than anything else, the proclaimed interest in finding a good position for the son is just part of the scoundrel’s game.

Just as – let us stop to say that if the next sentences are not about the end of the first volume, still, they may reveal aspects you do not want to know, if you have read this far and perhaps consider taking on this and the other nine volumes of a masterpiece – his father is having sex with Angela Tuck – apparently for the money that is no small prize, given that 5,000 pounds then would be in excess of 100k today – he suffers a heart attack and dies, the fortune belongs now to his wife, who becomes a friend of her dead husband’s mistress, paradoxically we might be tempted to say, only that would not take into account the maneuvers, skill and deceit of the woman and her crook of a spouse, both of whom convince the widow to put in 10,000 pounds into a venture that would run into the ground and from where the Trump-like character would steal a lot of money.
Not only is the mother determined to continue with the project of her late consort, but she will take this to an unimaginable extreme, for albeit Fielding will try to reason with her and say that he has always wanted to study at Cambridge, she insists on him going to India, to work for the tea plantation, and even when he has another option, without the funding from her which in the first place looked like the condition sine qua non of the Cambridge plan, she takes this to the level where she makes even that project seem impossible…in order to avoid further spoiler alerts let us not get into the details of what will happen once the tragic decision of Christopher Roland is announced and Mrs. Roland is obsessed with using it to further her scheme, planted in her head by Angela Tuck – who has an affair with the other villain of this narrative, Somerset Lloyd- Thing, as she calls him, someone who reminds this viewer of Kenneth Widmerpool, from the aforementioned chef d’oeuvre, A Dance to the Music of Time.

[John Wirenius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever, sly, and often compelling, Simon Raven's Alms For Oblivion doesn't have the heft of C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers, or the depth of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, but it is witty, sardonic and, every now and again poignant. A good 'un.

[William Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took the reading of Edward St Aubyn for it to click for me with Raven. I mistook brevity and pace for affection, instead of a break for pace through social malevolent acts: personal and international. St Aubyn may have more emotional appeal and reward; Raven a giddy drink.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

The description on Goodreads is adequate, as far as it goes, which isn't very far. I am going to confine my comments here to reflections on 'Alms for Oblivion' as a series. I am reviewing all the volumes individually (as of March 2023 this has only begun) under their various titles and listings on Goodreads.

The order in which the novels appear in this, and the subsequent two volumes in this edition, are the order in which they were published and is the order I prefer - eventually the series has been reordered chronologically but it is plain when reading the individual volumes that although Simon Raven claimed at the time he wrote the first two novels in the sequence, The Rich Pay Late and Friends in Low Places to be writing a portrait of Britain's post WWII 'establishment' class (a term which only came into vogue later) that he had abandoned this plan and substituted one of writing the picaresque adventures of Fielding Gray who only appeared in the third novel The Sabre Squadron as a minor character.

The first two books 'The Rich Pay Late' and 'Friends in Low Places' on the political/media/publishing world's (although 'media' as a word or concept is anachronistic for that period but that doesn't mean it didn't exist). Roughly speaking it deals with the post Suez conservative government and a younger group of Tory MP's who were attempting to make a name for themselves via a superficial modernity backed by a very pro-empire world view. That is the historical background but Raven's novels really don't deal with 'real' events in any way. He did have the advantage of having gone to school with James Pryor, a future cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher on whom he based Peter Morrison and William Rees-Mogg who eventually became editor of The Times (and was the father of the current grisly politician Jacob Rees-Mogg) and was the inspiration for Somerset Lloyd-James. Pryor always accepted and found his role as the inspiration for Peter Morrison amusing (at least that is what Pryor said after leaving parliament). I don't know that Rees-Mogg ever said anything publicly about his alter ego which is not surprising; Lloyd-James was an unpleasant character throughout his many appearances in 'AfO', but to be fair Rees-Mogg's life and career do not really match up with Lloyd-James. Certainly the UK's libel laws were never invoked but it was one of those open secrets that were common in pre-internet days.

To return to this omnibus volume of 'AfO' the third novel the 'The Sabre Squadron' moves to a whole new setting, the British army on the Rhine in the immediate post WWII years. Although the army was something Raven knew (having been in the army until forced to resign because of unpaid gambling debts) only Fielding Gray who made a brief appearance in 'FiLP' reappears in the 'SS'. The fourth volume to be published, and last book in this anthology, is simply titled 'Fielding Gray' and goes back to 1945 and deals with Fielding's last year at school and why he went into the army. Morrison and Lloyd-Jones are there as schoolboy friends of Fielding and one or two others who have or will feature in later 'AfO' novels also appear.

Although never officially stated, the introduction of Fielding Gray altered the character of the series, any attempt at portrait of an era, a la Proust or Anthony Powell, disappeared and the 'adventures' of Fielding Gray became the focal point of Alms for Oblivion and all those who featured in the opening two novels disappeared or were be pushed into supporting roles.

I cannot deny that the novels in this volume are great fun but they are not in any way a portrait of the UK establishment post WWII. They are very interesting as examples of the mocking of 'one's betters' and challenges to the whole shabby hypocrisy that Profumo affair would reveal. There is a great deal of suggestive naughtiness, but very little specifics that rise above 'Carry On' film camp. I remember reading quite a few of them in the late 1970's and enjoying them immensely but I was only 19/20 and a very young one at that. I read them all again during the COVID lock-down and enjoyed them but I wonder if I would have if not for the forced confinement and inability to get hold of reading matter? I still enjoyed them but it was in part a sentimental enjoyment of revisiting my past through these books. I wonder how much anyone born in the 1990's or later would enjoy them?

[Trevor Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an enjoyable read these four books are. The characters are drawn from the middle and upper classes and are politicians, businessmen, writers. Amoral adulterers who will stop at nothing, including blackmail and death threats to achieve their aims.

I found the third novel 'The Sabre Squadron' less engaging. I didn't really understand the reasons why a piece of research had to be thwarted.

Raven is very good at portraying the mores and speech of the upper classes, particularly the armed services.

The best novel is the fourth 'Fielding Gray' which deals with adolescent love and lust. A bullying father and manipulative mother are important parts of the plot.

It is a pleasure to read novels where the characters are such nasty, self-centred bullies.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing novels about about nasty and amoral upper class Brits, written during the 1960s. I have read two so far: The Rich Pay Late and Fielding Gray. Simon Raven is a very talented and funny writer and the books illuminate some aspects of British society in the postwar period and the hypocrisy and ruthlessness of the elite. The novels are not all that profound, but are entertaining and very readable.

[Ian Callaway]

Brilliant stuff. Full of a right rum bunch of characters. Cracking fun.

[Andrew Corrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three very fine novels and one less good one (Sabre Squadron). Raven is an entertaining mixture of Powell (whom I never got on with)/Waugh/the Amises with a frequently Wodehousian perfection of phrasing. Shenanigans among the upper crust in the post-war period, Raven is a master at conversation, at picking up on gestures, of thoughts which lie behind the spoken word. Rumour had it the novels were rather racy, but I suspect the passage of time has dulled the edge of what once were considered slightly shocking scenes.

The fourth, Fielding Gray, is (in my view) the best of the four in this volume. The events predate those of the others, forming a "prequel" if you like, and fleshing out the mystery which surrounds Fielding and the awkwardness his old schoolmates feel around him. The handling of the subtle English emotional life of that era is expert and moving. And there are scenes of hilarity and farce, too. Sadly, my edition seems to be missing about 20 or so pages at the end just as Fielding's resurgent mother was telling him to get a real job...

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Characters in these books are vicious, vile, sexist, antisemitic, racist, snobbish (strangely not homophobic, most of them), adulterous, Machiavellian, Tory hypocrites, but also strangely endearing. They are so well-written that they carry you along. And some of them, such as the "pure" mathematician Daniel Mond, are so out of their depth as to to be positive innocents in a world of wolves.

What makes these chatacers redeemable is their (mostly fruitless) attempts at redemption, even goodness, which you know are only going to make matters worse. This is the second time I've read these books, and they onyl seem to get better with age.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume contains the first four of a series of ten interlinked novels following a large cast of characters from the middle and upper classes of English postwar society - some of which I found more, some less interesting. My favourite out of these four stories was the last one, Fielding Gray - that is to say, this was the one that most managed to retain my interest, which was slipping rather frequently especially with the first two books. Given the high average rating and praise, I admittedly expected a little... more.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's fun to read at the beginning but gets repetitive unfortunately.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

See individual titles for reviews.

[Karen]

* 1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list

Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel – they appear here for the first time in a single list.

[Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read all three volumes of the Alms for Oblivion series. Simon Raven is a brilliant writer. I learned of him by watching The Pallisers and Edward & Mrs. Simpson. He wrote the tv script for both of these brilliant shows. He is a strange writer, with a sense of the perverse and macabre. He paints a detailed picture of Britain over the 20th century.

[John Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon Raven is well worth reading, if only for his ability with the roman fleuve, balancing a cast of characters through novel after novel.
Raven's sardonic and bitter reflection of post war British society is refreshing, amusing and a welcome antidote to the knowing worldliness of Anthony Powell.

[Deepak Venkatramani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific book!!

Unable to believe this isn't more well-known. Very satirical look at trends in and thoughts on post-war britain, written with tongue-in-cheek humour and a sometimes dark imagination.

[Lucy Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, exciting, sad.