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Alms for Oblivion #6
The Judas Boy
Der Romanautor Fielding Gray wird 1962 von der BBC beauftragt, in der Sendereihe „Heute ist Geschichte“ ein ungeschöntes Bild der Unabhängigwerdung Zyperns zu zeigen. Einst als Berufssoldat dort stationiert, ist Gray seit einem Bombenanschlag fürs Leben gezeichnet, der seiner Offizierskarriere damals ein jähes Ende gesetzt hat. Kaum hat Gray mit der Recherche begonnen, ereignen sich mysteriöse Unfälle, die ihn offenbar von seiner Mission abbringen sollen. Und kurz bevor er in Athen einen legendären Guerillaführer interviewen kann, wirft ihn die Begegnung mit einem jungen Mann aus der Bahn, die ihn noch auf andere Weise in die Vergangenheit entführt – in die schuldhaften Verstrickungen einer fatalen Liebesgeschichte in seiner Jugend. Vom Leben versehrt, stürzt Gray sich in den Ruinen der Antike in ein unverhofftes Glück, in dem für kurze Zeit das Gestern einem hoffnungsfrohen Heute weicht und die Rollen zwischen Opfer und Täter noch nicht verteilt scheinen. Im sechsten Band seiner Romanreihe „Almosen fürs Vergessen“ verfolgt Simon Raven die Geschichte eines Glücksuchenden zwischen vertuschten Verbrechen, skrupellosen Agenten und kulturpolitischen Machtinteressen – und führt ein weiteres Mal vor, dass man mit dem Lachen der Furien nicht nur in der Antike zu rechnen hat.
- GenresFiction
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
1 person is currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
Simon Raven
64 books31 followersSimon 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 14, 2025
"It is 1962. Tom Llewyllyn has been invited to create a prestige television series...(and) is given carte blanche...to prepare candid and controversial programmes...and invites (Fielding Gray) to undertake research for a programme on 'Cyprus after the troubles'.
"Fielding agrees...but fails to understand that...the CIA (amongst others)...are deeply concerned that he should not uncover any kind of truth...
"...Fielding is determined to proceed...his opponents...are determined that he will be distracted...and provide (a distraction that)...draws Fielding away from...his story...and back to everything that first caused his...downfall." From the flyleaf if the uniform edition published by Anthony Blond in 1968 provided because at the time of writing (March 2023) the synopsis for this book is only available in German which considering how completely English Raven was in a outlandishly archaic, and possibly assumed, colonel Blimpish way is actually rather funny.
This is the fifth novel in the series as according to publication order (see my review of Raven's 'Friends in low Places' for a full discussion of the publication versus chronological order question) and we are back in the present after the two previous 'Alms for Oblivion' volumes were we saw Fielding as an army officer in 1952 and a schoolboy in 1945. Now we see Fielding as a TV researcher which is no more surprising or unlikely then many incidents in this novel. I must warn that in the paragraphs that follow there will be spoilers but only as few as possible and only because without them it would be impossible to review this novel.
The novel is about Fielding's attempts to reveal the real reasons for the 'Cyprus Crisis' (see my footnote *1 below) as one of Raven's characters explains, "(In Cyprus) We thought we were dealing with a spontaneous demand for self-determination. In fact...the Cypriots were being...pressured into demanding something they didn't want and...into using means they detested to get it. We (i.e. the British - Liam) weren't quarrelling with the Cypriots...we were fighting an American secret service conspiracy to humiliate and dispossess us...the only motivation was...atavistic jealousy of the British..."
The other part of the novel is the machinations of a CIA man to prevent Fielding revealing this 'truth'. The CIA man forces an middle age female acquaintance of Fielding's to reveal that Fielding is carrying a torch for a dead school friend named Christopher and she supplies the useful information that the dead boy looks like a statue of a boy with a flute in the arcade of the Agora the Americans rebuilt in Athens.
The CIA man goes to Athens and finds a boy (fathered by a German soldier during the war because no Greek boy could look like an ancient Greek statue never mind an English public schoolboy) who he engineers for Fielding to stumble upon in the ruins of Delphi, immediately after Fielding has offered up a prayer and libation to the ancient Gods. He abandons his quest to reveal the perfidy of the CIA and goes off for a honeymoon with his 'Christopher'.
Once Fielding has screwed everything up forcing the abandonment of the TV programme 'Christopher' reveals himself to be not be a 17 year old English public schoolboy brought back to earth and life in answer to Fielding's prayers but a twenty two year old half-breed prostitute who looks young because he spent most of his youth without enough food and his growth was stunted. The CIA man appears in car and takes 'Christopher' away and Fielding suffers a total emotional and physical collapse.
I couldn't avoid giving some of the story away because it is only by doing so I can comment on the utter ridiculous nature of the novel, were it is not in fact rather offensive. This was the first novel by Simon Raven' that I read and although I found his writing immensely fun I couldn't help thinking that it was terribly improbably.
As a citizen of a country formerly part of the British Empire (Ireland) I knew that people don't fight a five year war of independence as the Cypriots did because they have been tricked into it by the CIA. Although at time I first read the novel (1979) I was to young (19) to know or have read anything much about the period I was confident that when the CIA undermined foreign governments they did so at the behest of US government policy and not out of 'atavistic jealousy'.
I also found the salacious aspects of the novel disappointing. To get information from Fielding's female friend Raven has the CIA man choreograph a complicated seduction scene were the woman is brought to a state of sexual frenzy by nine teenage boys stimulating her and then, on signal from the CIA man ceasing, so the woman is left begging for more which she only gets after divulging the required information. That this takes place outdoors on dark night on a shingle beach made me think it was not simply unlikely but impossible. If it was dark and the boys concentrating on the woman how did they see any signal? How did nine boys simultaneously stimulate this woman, in the dark, without knocking heads, elbows and anything else against other? Was there really enough room for nine boys to simultaneously stimulate one woman? I doubted it and I couldn't help thinking both those boys and the woman must have been terribly uncomfortable on a shingle beach - those stones are very uncomfortable to sit, kneel or lie on - never mind the racket the shingle makes as you move on it, and there must have been a great deal of movement as the boys undressed the woman and themselves. It all seemed to improbable and suggested Raven had more imagination then experience were sex was involved (see my footnote *2 below).
Finally the idea that 'Christopher' had looked exactly like a particular 2000 year old statue (after all Fielding had never seen the statue and Christopher together) and that it was possible to find a Greek boy, even one with a German father, who also looked like that statue is really stretching matters. There is no suggestion that it was a general, or vague resemblance, or one that conjured up an image. It was the dead 'Christopher' returned, identical, to life. Aside from stretching probabilities there is the problem that starvation doesn't keep you young looking but rather ages you and even if this boy looked exactly like Christopher he certainly wouldn't have spoken or sounded like Christopher or any 17 year old public schoolboy. The idea that this rent boy from the slums of Athens was going to so bewitch Fielding that he will throw away his quest is pretty far fetched.
Like the sex scenes with the woman and the nine boys on the shingle beach the scenes between Fielding and his reborn 'Christopher' are very unconvincing. I don't know what I expected when I first read it but I certainly thought that there was more convincingly expressed homo-erotic desire in 'The Devil's Advocate' by Morris West published nearly ten years before then in this novel. I didn't believe the novel when I first read it and having read it again my opinion hasn't altered if anything it has only become more absolute. It may be well written, it does have a certain scurrilous charm, but it is utterly unconvincing.
What is most unconvincing are Fielding's opinions about the Cyprus Crisis (and it is clear that Raven on some level believed it too). It is the sort of theory you expect a retired major making on one of his rare outings from his shabby rooming house in a rundown provincial English seaside town to the golf club to make between complaining about his small pension and socialist governments giving in to 'wogs' abroad and home and all the long haired Nancy boys at the BBC undermining respect for authority, etc. etc.
It is the rant of suburban Middle England the males of whom constituted Raven's most loyal readers and it is not surprising Raven believed and wrote what he did; he spent most of his life living and working in a small seaside pension and low to middle ranking retired army officers are exactly the sort of people he mixed with. Raven wasn't a regular at either the clubs of St James or the fleshpots of Soho but of the most banal of suburban of environments. His concept of a Britain cheated out of it's empire and of basically loyal subjects who still wished they would one back was a delusion that appealed to many Britons when Raven was writing. That hankering for the importance empire gave English people still lingers today (March 2023) and explains why Brexit was successful.
But the greatest truth about Raven is that although a tremendous snob he was most respects a tremendous fraud. He was not part of any landowning or army class, his father manufactured zippers or something equally absurd. Rather than being part of the ancient regime he was an outsider wannabe projecting an 'Oxbridge/Public School' image to fool those lower down the social scale. Reading his books today it is sad to realise that Raven probably had as little real experience of sex beyond school boy crushes as he did of the corridors of power.
*1 Raven's insistence on calling what happened in Cyprus between 1955 and 59 the Cyprus Crisis (any Cypriot calls it their War for Independence) was, and still is, typical of many Briton's continuing refusal to view their colonial entanglements by anything except the euphemisms that were used to deny reality. It is actually insulting that India's first rebellion is still called by many English academics and writers 'The Mutiny' though it is a totally illogical, the troops were mercenaries working for a public limited company whose authority came from the 'Emperor of India' in Delhi who who the rebellious soldiers were loyal too.
*2 I have commented on Raven's unconvincing writing about sex in my review of 'Fielding Gray' and of his other novels.
"Fielding agrees...but fails to understand that...the CIA (amongst others)...are deeply concerned that he should not uncover any kind of truth...
"...Fielding is determined to proceed...his opponents...are determined that he will be distracted...and provide (a distraction that)...draws Fielding away from...his story...and back to everything that first caused his...downfall." From the flyleaf if the uniform edition published by Anthony Blond in 1968 provided because at the time of writing (March 2023) the synopsis for this book is only available in German which considering how completely English Raven was in a outlandishly archaic, and possibly assumed, colonel Blimpish way is actually rather funny.
This is the fifth novel in the series as according to publication order (see my review of Raven's 'Friends in low Places' for a full discussion of the publication versus chronological order question) and we are back in the present after the two previous 'Alms for Oblivion' volumes were we saw Fielding as an army officer in 1952 and a schoolboy in 1945. Now we see Fielding as a TV researcher which is no more surprising or unlikely then many incidents in this novel. I must warn that in the paragraphs that follow there will be spoilers but only as few as possible and only because without them it would be impossible to review this novel.
The novel is about Fielding's attempts to reveal the real reasons for the 'Cyprus Crisis' (see my footnote *1 below) as one of Raven's characters explains, "(In Cyprus) We thought we were dealing with a spontaneous demand for self-determination. In fact...the Cypriots were being...pressured into demanding something they didn't want and...into using means they detested to get it. We (i.e. the British - Liam) weren't quarrelling with the Cypriots...we were fighting an American secret service conspiracy to humiliate and dispossess us...the only motivation was...atavistic jealousy of the British..."
The other part of the novel is the machinations of a CIA man to prevent Fielding revealing this 'truth'. The CIA man forces an middle age female acquaintance of Fielding's to reveal that Fielding is carrying a torch for a dead school friend named Christopher and she supplies the useful information that the dead boy looks like a statue of a boy with a flute in the arcade of the Agora the Americans rebuilt in Athens.
The CIA man goes to Athens and finds a boy (fathered by a German soldier during the war because no Greek boy could look like an ancient Greek statue never mind an English public schoolboy) who he engineers for Fielding to stumble upon in the ruins of Delphi, immediately after Fielding has offered up a prayer and libation to the ancient Gods. He abandons his quest to reveal the perfidy of the CIA and goes off for a honeymoon with his 'Christopher'.
Once Fielding has screwed everything up forcing the abandonment of the TV programme 'Christopher' reveals himself to be not be a 17 year old English public schoolboy brought back to earth and life in answer to Fielding's prayers but a twenty two year old half-breed prostitute who looks young because he spent most of his youth without enough food and his growth was stunted. The CIA man appears in car and takes 'Christopher' away and Fielding suffers a total emotional and physical collapse.
I couldn't avoid giving some of the story away because it is only by doing so I can comment on the utter ridiculous nature of the novel, were it is not in fact rather offensive. This was the first novel by Simon Raven' that I read and although I found his writing immensely fun I couldn't help thinking that it was terribly improbably.
As a citizen of a country formerly part of the British Empire (Ireland) I knew that people don't fight a five year war of independence as the Cypriots did because they have been tricked into it by the CIA. Although at time I first read the novel (1979) I was to young (19) to know or have read anything much about the period I was confident that when the CIA undermined foreign governments they did so at the behest of US government policy and not out of 'atavistic jealousy'.
I also found the salacious aspects of the novel disappointing. To get information from Fielding's female friend Raven has the CIA man choreograph a complicated seduction scene were the woman is brought to a state of sexual frenzy by nine teenage boys stimulating her and then, on signal from the CIA man ceasing, so the woman is left begging for more which she only gets after divulging the required information. That this takes place outdoors on dark night on a shingle beach made me think it was not simply unlikely but impossible. If it was dark and the boys concentrating on the woman how did they see any signal? How did nine boys simultaneously stimulate this woman, in the dark, without knocking heads, elbows and anything else against other? Was there really enough room for nine boys to simultaneously stimulate one woman? I doubted it and I couldn't help thinking both those boys and the woman must have been terribly uncomfortable on a shingle beach - those stones are very uncomfortable to sit, kneel or lie on - never mind the racket the shingle makes as you move on it, and there must have been a great deal of movement as the boys undressed the woman and themselves. It all seemed to improbable and suggested Raven had more imagination then experience were sex was involved (see my footnote *2 below).
Finally the idea that 'Christopher' had looked exactly like a particular 2000 year old statue (after all Fielding had never seen the statue and Christopher together) and that it was possible to find a Greek boy, even one with a German father, who also looked like that statue is really stretching matters. There is no suggestion that it was a general, or vague resemblance, or one that conjured up an image. It was the dead 'Christopher' returned, identical, to life. Aside from stretching probabilities there is the problem that starvation doesn't keep you young looking but rather ages you and even if this boy looked exactly like Christopher he certainly wouldn't have spoken or sounded like Christopher or any 17 year old public schoolboy. The idea that this rent boy from the slums of Athens was going to so bewitch Fielding that he will throw away his quest is pretty far fetched.
Like the sex scenes with the woman and the nine boys on the shingle beach the scenes between Fielding and his reborn 'Christopher' are very unconvincing. I don't know what I expected when I first read it but I certainly thought that there was more convincingly expressed homo-erotic desire in 'The Devil's Advocate' by Morris West published nearly ten years before then in this novel. I didn't believe the novel when I first read it and having read it again my opinion hasn't altered if anything it has only become more absolute. It may be well written, it does have a certain scurrilous charm, but it is utterly unconvincing.
What is most unconvincing are Fielding's opinions about the Cyprus Crisis (and it is clear that Raven on some level believed it too). It is the sort of theory you expect a retired major making on one of his rare outings from his shabby rooming house in a rundown provincial English seaside town to the golf club to make between complaining about his small pension and socialist governments giving in to 'wogs' abroad and home and all the long haired Nancy boys at the BBC undermining respect for authority, etc. etc.
It is the rant of suburban Middle England the males of whom constituted Raven's most loyal readers and it is not surprising Raven believed and wrote what he did; he spent most of his life living and working in a small seaside pension and low to middle ranking retired army officers are exactly the sort of people he mixed with. Raven wasn't a regular at either the clubs of St James or the fleshpots of Soho but of the most banal of suburban of environments. His concept of a Britain cheated out of it's empire and of basically loyal subjects who still wished they would one back was a delusion that appealed to many Britons when Raven was writing. That hankering for the importance empire gave English people still lingers today (March 2023) and explains why Brexit was successful.
But the greatest truth about Raven is that although a tremendous snob he was most respects a tremendous fraud. He was not part of any landowning or army class, his father manufactured zippers or something equally absurd. Rather than being part of the ancient regime he was an outsider wannabe projecting an 'Oxbridge/Public School' image to fool those lower down the social scale. Reading his books today it is sad to realise that Raven probably had as little real experience of sex beyond school boy crushes as he did of the corridors of power.
*1 Raven's insistence on calling what happened in Cyprus between 1955 and 59 the Cyprus Crisis (any Cypriot calls it their War for Independence) was, and still is, typical of many Briton's continuing refusal to view their colonial entanglements by anything except the euphemisms that were used to deny reality. It is actually insulting that India's first rebellion is still called by many English academics and writers 'The Mutiny' though it is a totally illogical, the troops were mercenaries working for a public limited company whose authority came from the 'Emperor of India' in Delhi who who the rebellious soldiers were loyal too.
*2 I have commented on Raven's unconvincing writing about sex in my review of 'Fielding Gray' and of his other novels.
February 28, 2016
Intellectual, and a bit trashy.
Aside from one repugnant thread which ran through this novel, for the most part, I found it to be an intellectually engaging "spy" novel.
I have to qualify, "spy", because it's an easy way of saying: it was a novel about a convoluted Intelligence operation, with a psychological aim.
Raven's books are a conundrum for me. There are elements which are intellectually stimulating, then they devolve into melodrama.
There is also an anti-American subtext here- which is amusing. I have bad news for you Brits, I don't think America was ever "neurotically envious" of the British Empire...especially not during the Cold War... I'm laughing as I write this... I can see a mercenary aspect to America's non-participation in Suez '56, but inveigling British troops to commit atrocities during the Cyprus Emergency to embarrass Britain? I can't quite see it... Not a blip on our radars, Old Boy.
So, again, I end another Simon Raven review by saying the much same thing: beautifully written, well crafted, compelling characters, and the germ of what could've been an utterly fascinating, engaging and intellectually stimulating "Intelligence" novel. I wish I could travel back in time and be Mr. Raven's editor. What could've been...
Aside from one repugnant thread which ran through this novel, for the most part, I found it to be an intellectually engaging "spy" novel.
I have to qualify, "spy", because it's an easy way of saying: it was a novel about a convoluted Intelligence operation, with a psychological aim.
Raven's books are a conundrum for me. There are elements which are intellectually stimulating, then they devolve into melodrama.
There is also an anti-American subtext here- which is amusing. I have bad news for you Brits, I don't think America was ever "neurotically envious" of the British Empire...especially not during the Cold War... I'm laughing as I write this... I can see a mercenary aspect to America's non-participation in Suez '56, but inveigling British troops to commit atrocities during the Cyprus Emergency to embarrass Britain? I can't quite see it... Not a blip on our radars, Old Boy.
So, again, I end another Simon Raven review by saying the much same thing: beautifully written, well crafted, compelling characters, and the germ of what could've been an utterly fascinating, engaging and intellectually stimulating "Intelligence" novel. I wish I could travel back in time and be Mr. Raven's editor. What could've been...
November 18, 2025
The Judas Boy by Simon Raven, volume V of Alms for Oblivion
Nine out of 10
The first two volumes of the epic Alms of Oblivion, Fielding Gray http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/09/f... and Sound the Retreat have been more than a pleasure to read, then followed the less exulting The Sabre Squadron, which gave way for Friends in Low Places http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/10/f..., the latter being more rewarding and exciting than The Judas Boy, which does not meet the admittedly high expectations…
Fielding Gray, the hero of the first chapter in this roman fleuve, has already returned in The Saber Squadron http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/09/t... and he is at the center of the plot here, wherein he is called by writer, political pundit and now BBC employee Tom Llewyllyn to travel to Cyprus to investigate a story for his program of History Today, where he intends to present history as different from the official version and though very reluctant at first, Fielding Gray would eventually take on the task with determination and industry, at the very least in the first part of the assignment..
There are forces at play that do not want the truth about Cyprus to be known – and for that matter, genuine facts in general…in the last volume, there has been more than a brouhaha over the Suez Canal background and much of what happens in Friends in Low Places revolves around the letter that Max de Freville knows of, sends Lewson to get and then we all watch how various important figures are menaced by the publication or at the very least the idea that more would know about the deep involvement in the catastrophic military action taken by the British, French and Israelis against the Egyptians, after Nasser had nationalized the Canal
Actually, the nefarious concept, the conspiracy that is used to explain what really happened in Cyprus is part of the problem that yours truly has with volume V of what is otherwise a very impressive opus, and if I buy the premise that the Cypriots had been making a lot of noise and quite a kerfuffle to obtain better conditions and the exaggerated violence – we know from the previous chapters that Fielding Gray had been badly mutilated, lost one eye in an explosion on the island of Aphrodite – had not been the idea, the wish of the Mediterranean men, relaxed and not inclined to such vicious violence, the notion that the Americans have been actually the masterminds behind a fight against their allies seems more than farfetched.
True, on the other hand, we can look at what is happening today – and in general, but especially over the past four years – in the United States of Erica and then stop and say…well, ok, anything is possible in connection with that country and its people – over sixty million have opted and it looks like they still favor, hopefully in a smaller by one million number, an absolute mad man, who is an idiot besides…
Earl Restarick, the American who had tried to force the hero of the Saber Squadron to give his discoveries to the outfit that may have been CIA, makes a comeback and he is the vile personage that had controlled the campaign in Cyprus, from the shadows, sitting alongside the supposed leader of the movement, causing not just bloodshed, but some violence that is so gruesome, it beast anything that would have happened after the Nazi death camps…
Thus the effort would be to uncover and prove the role played by this American agent, who nevertheless appears to have acted without the knowledge of the leadership apparatus of the CIA, or of the political supervisor that are supposed to take such decisions that affect the British allies – we also get here some explanation about why the Americans would have done such a crazy thing and reasons range from anti-colonialism to some revenge against the empire, which used to have as colony…the USA.
Even if there are grains of truth on one side and on the other a work of fiction is not a history book and we need to understand and accept the notion of artistic license – or else read history and nonfiction books – still, the way the operation is conceived, the massive trouble that appears to be taken and then the botched executions do not look reasonable to this reader…I mean, they try and kill Fielding as he travels on a train through former Yugoslavia and they think of decoupling the car in which he is and have it smash against rocks, with the idea that he would be trapped inside and unrecognizable…
All this to prevent the public from knowing about what the Americans have been up to…granted, once their role – if we accept that they would play such a stupid game and well, yes, the idea of the very stable genius and the tens of millions of similarly endowed idiots comes to mind and what they can do with such brilliant brains – is agreed with, the chain of events is very sensible, for indeed, they would call the PM in anger over the publication of such compromising details and then he (by that time, there had been no female prime minister) would dissipate fury and fire down through the hierarchy…
One of those who is involved in the effort to compromise the documentary is the always ghoulish Somerset Lloyd-James, working now with Lord Canteloupe, pressing people at the BBC to prevent Tom from doing the film, then appealing to a prostitute – or sex worker as it is correct to call them today – to try and blackmail or throughout the journalist on the basis of breaking the moral code inserted in his contract, but the sex worker refuses and thus they use a detail connected with his health card to take him out.
There are many other things happening to the other many characters that populate this and the other volumes of Alms for Oblivion, from the pregnancy of Isobel, who is now married to the publisher Gregory Stern, the latter, enthused and overwhelmed by the idea that he will become a father, starts losing his grip at his office, where he gets interested in obscure, or outright off the mark books with a Jewish theme, commentaries over commentaries over commentaries at some stage, but he may be released from this nightmare…
Nine out of 10
The first two volumes of the epic Alms of Oblivion, Fielding Gray http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/09/f... and Sound the Retreat have been more than a pleasure to read, then followed the less exulting The Sabre Squadron, which gave way for Friends in Low Places http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/10/f..., the latter being more rewarding and exciting than The Judas Boy, which does not meet the admittedly high expectations…
Fielding Gray, the hero of the first chapter in this roman fleuve, has already returned in The Saber Squadron http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/09/t... and he is at the center of the plot here, wherein he is called by writer, political pundit and now BBC employee Tom Llewyllyn to travel to Cyprus to investigate a story for his program of History Today, where he intends to present history as different from the official version and though very reluctant at first, Fielding Gray would eventually take on the task with determination and industry, at the very least in the first part of the assignment..
There are forces at play that do not want the truth about Cyprus to be known – and for that matter, genuine facts in general…in the last volume, there has been more than a brouhaha over the Suez Canal background and much of what happens in Friends in Low Places revolves around the letter that Max de Freville knows of, sends Lewson to get and then we all watch how various important figures are menaced by the publication or at the very least the idea that more would know about the deep involvement in the catastrophic military action taken by the British, French and Israelis against the Egyptians, after Nasser had nationalized the Canal
Actually, the nefarious concept, the conspiracy that is used to explain what really happened in Cyprus is part of the problem that yours truly has with volume V of what is otherwise a very impressive opus, and if I buy the premise that the Cypriots had been making a lot of noise and quite a kerfuffle to obtain better conditions and the exaggerated violence – we know from the previous chapters that Fielding Gray had been badly mutilated, lost one eye in an explosion on the island of Aphrodite – had not been the idea, the wish of the Mediterranean men, relaxed and not inclined to such vicious violence, the notion that the Americans have been actually the masterminds behind a fight against their allies seems more than farfetched.
True, on the other hand, we can look at what is happening today – and in general, but especially over the past four years – in the United States of Erica and then stop and say…well, ok, anything is possible in connection with that country and its people – over sixty million have opted and it looks like they still favor, hopefully in a smaller by one million number, an absolute mad man, who is an idiot besides…
Earl Restarick, the American who had tried to force the hero of the Saber Squadron to give his discoveries to the outfit that may have been CIA, makes a comeback and he is the vile personage that had controlled the campaign in Cyprus, from the shadows, sitting alongside the supposed leader of the movement, causing not just bloodshed, but some violence that is so gruesome, it beast anything that would have happened after the Nazi death camps…
Thus the effort would be to uncover and prove the role played by this American agent, who nevertheless appears to have acted without the knowledge of the leadership apparatus of the CIA, or of the political supervisor that are supposed to take such decisions that affect the British allies – we also get here some explanation about why the Americans would have done such a crazy thing and reasons range from anti-colonialism to some revenge against the empire, which used to have as colony…the USA.
Even if there are grains of truth on one side and on the other a work of fiction is not a history book and we need to understand and accept the notion of artistic license – or else read history and nonfiction books – still, the way the operation is conceived, the massive trouble that appears to be taken and then the botched executions do not look reasonable to this reader…I mean, they try and kill Fielding as he travels on a train through former Yugoslavia and they think of decoupling the car in which he is and have it smash against rocks, with the idea that he would be trapped inside and unrecognizable…
All this to prevent the public from knowing about what the Americans have been up to…granted, once their role – if we accept that they would play such a stupid game and well, yes, the idea of the very stable genius and the tens of millions of similarly endowed idiots comes to mind and what they can do with such brilliant brains – is agreed with, the chain of events is very sensible, for indeed, they would call the PM in anger over the publication of such compromising details and then he (by that time, there had been no female prime minister) would dissipate fury and fire down through the hierarchy…
One of those who is involved in the effort to compromise the documentary is the always ghoulish Somerset Lloyd-James, working now with Lord Canteloupe, pressing people at the BBC to prevent Tom from doing the film, then appealing to a prostitute – or sex worker as it is correct to call them today – to try and blackmail or throughout the journalist on the basis of breaking the moral code inserted in his contract, but the sex worker refuses and thus they use a detail connected with his health card to take him out.
There are many other things happening to the other many characters that populate this and the other volumes of Alms for Oblivion, from the pregnancy of Isobel, who is now married to the publisher Gregory Stern, the latter, enthused and overwhelmed by the idea that he will become a father, starts losing his grip at his office, where he gets interested in obscure, or outright off the mark books with a Jewish theme, commentaries over commentaries over commentaries at some stage, but he may be released from this nightmare…
January 25, 2025
3.5, rounded up.
The shortest of the Oblivion series, and in many ways the least interesting, so far. I suspect that Raven might have been induced to try to copy Ian Fleming's series of Bond books, as here we get numerous somewhat ludicrous set pieces involving both near death scenarios as well as sexual escapades that beggar description - as well as a plot centered on the UK/US involvement in the Cypriot War of Independence. No matter how far-fetched it all gets, I still find great enjoyment can be had in Raven's jaundiced eye and jaunty prose - and it's fun to travel through a long series with characters who have become comfortable companions and see where destiny leads them.
The shortest of the Oblivion series, and in many ways the least interesting, so far. I suspect that Raven might have been induced to try to copy Ian Fleming's series of Bond books, as here we get numerous somewhat ludicrous set pieces involving both near death scenarios as well as sexual escapades that beggar description - as well as a plot centered on the UK/US involvement in the Cypriot War of Independence. No matter how far-fetched it all gets, I still find great enjoyment can be had in Raven's jaundiced eye and jaunty prose - and it's fun to travel through a long series with characters who have become comfortable companions and see where destiny leads them.
August 20, 2013
Raven's usual brisk mix of the high, the low and the grotesque, but the slightest novel in the series so far. The plotting is pretty straightforward, the deviousness more contrived than outrageous. Scenes are lazily set and mechanically handled. Raven can go over the top sublimely or ridiculously, and here it's mostly the latter variety. The scene of Angela's sexual torture is beyond embarrassing, and Fielding's involvement with Nicos is a hopelessly implausible muddle of gay sentimentality. All in all, it reads like a cross between Evelyn Waugh and Eugène Sue. But, as usual, Raven is insidiously convincing when writing of society's hidden crosscurrents of motive and intrigue, most of them base or vile. Whenever his characters give in to their lower impulses or adverse persuasion, it creates an instant finger-snapping recognition effect. After Raven, any other Englishman writing of the same milieu (say, Anthony Powell) will seem to be glossing over chasms of iniquity.
Read
July 16, 2014In some ways the slightest book yet of Alms for Oblivion; the plot is reminiscent of minor Graham Greene, and relies on the reader having a certain predisposition towards enjoying tales of Cypriot perfidy. More interesting is the character of Fielding Gray, no longer pampered and pouting as in his first appearance but now a scarred wreck - and an author, some of whose books seem reminiscent of Raven's. The series has never been entirely subtle, but here it can more blatantly offer commentary on itself, and it's in the extra dimension thus accessed that much of the interest lies.
(Not that Goodreads has many cover images for the series at all, but this is where my collection stops being the Panther editions, with their splendidly disreputable covers, and instead passes into Granada. Doubtless hoping to make the books less offputting to people who wouldn't enjoy them anyway, Granada gave them all line-drawing covers which I can only assume were intended to be mildly humorous. Instead they inspire the note of mild despair always occasioned when people with no sense of humour try to prove otherwise)
(Not that Goodreads has many cover images for the series at all, but this is where my collection stops being the Panther editions, with their splendidly disreputable covers, and instead passes into Granada. Doubtless hoping to make the books less offputting to people who wouldn't enjoy them anyway, Granada gave them all line-drawing covers which I can only assume were intended to be mildly humorous. Instead they inspire the note of mild despair always occasioned when people with no sense of humour try to prove otherwise)
September 23, 2012
Stephen Fry says he preferred Raven's series of novels about England in the twentieth century to Anthony Powell's. So I gave them a go. I don't agree with him but I'm glad he said that otherwise I would have missed them altogether and they (despite being inferior to the dance - what isn't?) are very very good indeed.
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