Fielding Gray

Alms for Oblivion #1

by Simon Raven

Book by Raven, Simon

Genres: Fiction, Coming Of Age, British Literature, LGBT, Queer, Classics, Gay

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

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

[Alex Sarll]

Between having seen the TV series (even if it is considered something of a travesty), and knowing it falls apart towards the end, I've concluded I'll probably never get around to A Dance to the Music of Time - but I have always been intrigued by its disreputable cousin, Alms for Oblivion. Read the first paragraph of Raven's Wikipedia entry and you'll have some idea of why. And I decided to start it here - chronologically the first book. Is that wise? Would I recommend that people first visit Narnia with The Magician's Nephew? I've no idea, but it seems as good an order as any, and I've already ordered the next two. Besides, I think I'd always rather go with the order suggested by handy Panther paperbacks (I love how all Panther books have vaguely sensationalist covers, however classy the contents) than bulky, reputable Vintage collections.
And so: we open on Fielding Gray, hero of the school, in the first summer after victory over Nazi Germany, as it becomes clear that things might not be going back to normal after all. Something I had never really considered before: the contrast between the spree after the War to End War, and the drab austerity which followed the war after that. This is the first of many disappointments, for Raven knows that few villains can plausibly infuriate so well as an adult who can claim - honestly or not - that they have a young protagonist's best interests at heart, even as they constantly frustrate said protagonist's wishes - because even for those of us with much happier families than Fielding's*, those primal frustrations still smoulder. And Fielding has his life all planned out, but those vile adults all seem to have other plans...
That doesn't sound like much, does it? But this is an opening act, written as a prequel, and one senses how much more is to come. Fielding's contemporaries are drawn in bright enough colours - yet without being mere types - that I'm already hooked, intrigued by what will become of them all as the Twentieth Century trudges on in a manner for which some of them are clearly better prepared than others.

*Fielding's gleefully philistine arse of a father is called John Gray, which amused me no end. For some time I've felt that anyone ordering a book by the intellectual Eeyore of that name should instead be sent one by the divorced relationship guru, and vice versa. I'm not sure it would do either set of readers any good, but it would surely annoy and confuse two sets of people who deserve that, which is something.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5, rounded up.

First in Raven's 'Alms for Oblivion' series, which I am reading in chronological, rather than in publication order (of which this was actually the 4th). The story centers around the titular character and is purportedly based on his journals from the period of a few months in the middle of 1945 at the end of WW2. Gray is an 18-year-old youth, matriculating at Lancaster College, with his eye on going to Cambridge as a Classics scholar - and is clearly autobiographical in nature.

Much of the book is taken with his crush on a handsome, though rather unintelligent boy in his class, Christopher Roland, which ends tragically. Auberon Waugh (Evelyn's eldest son) proclaimed Raven's series as superior to Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time', which is one of my all-time favorite reads, which is what impelled me to try him out. Jury's still out on whether that will prove true - but this first volume bodes well, as I found it both quite droll and intriguing.

[Edmund Marlowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in an unnamed boys' public school in the months following Germany's surrender in May 1945, Fielding Gray appears to be highly autobiographical, as, like his eponymous protagonist, Raven was expelled from such a school (Charterhouse) for homosexual activities despite similar scholastic and cricketing prowess. He also had a understandably loathed father.

17-year-old golden schoolboy hero Fielding conceives lustful and vaguely romantic feelings for "not clever" and "not handsome" Christopher Roland, his own age, to whom any explanation of his love is impossible due to his being "of very conventional outlook and not pervious to ideas." He has hope nevertheless because convention at their school took in "the notion of the 'pash' which any boy might entertain for another, usually a younger one."

"From the age of thirteen and a half," Fielding had amused himself "with a variety of boys and without any ill effects," but his tentative pursuit of Christopher ruins their lives. Their only amorous encounter is wrecked by Christopher's premature over-excitement and such love as Fielding had felt for him evaporates with Christopher's consequent loss of innocence, leaving only a little intermittent lust. Aided by a rich assortment of fascinatingly obnoxious characters, from these small beginnings things spiral out of control until Fielding's once-assured plans for a worthwhile life are permanently wrecked.

So what really went wrong? Apart from the generous and worldly Senior Usher, Fielding is the only likeable character, his nicest friend Peter Morrison delivering the coup de grâce out of priggishness. But Fielding too is flawed, his aspirations not nearly matching his talents. It is entirely in keeping with his shallow hedonism to love unworthily, and it is this that is his undoing.

Love affairs between older and younger boys were a common occurrence at all the public schools until a generation or so ago. As Morrison says, the boys "get a lot of pleasure from one another ... it's not what two boys do together in private which does the permanent damage, but the hysterical row which goes on if they get caught," a state of affairs still very much the case today whenever there is a significant age difference, ironically so as it was the difference in age which was the source of the passion for both parties and the reason it tended to be beneficent. Typically a younger boy hero-worshipped and sought to emulate an admirable elder one (like Fielding), who responded protectively with his greater wisdom and knowledge. Such relationships could easily be equal the only way which matters for love to succeed: equality of need for one another.

But Christopher was untypically not a younger boy. His liaison with Fielding was, like the more usual pederastic affairs, unequal, but in an obstructive rather than beneficent way. The inequality between them was permanent and unbridgeable, being based on a considerable difference in intelligence. Fielding's appeal lay in the illusion he could impart his brilliance to one too stupid to benefit from it and Christopher's lay in his easily swept-away innocence, a feeble substitute for beauty and vulnerability. Had Fielding instead bestowed his love on a 14-year-old equal to himself in intelligence and good looks, he could have done some real good, and (again, provided they weren't caught) enriched their lives instead of ruining them.

Ironically, a sexual liaison between two 17-year-old boys today would hardly raise any adult eyebrows as long as it was consummated outside school grounds, whereas the more traditional affair between boys a few years apart in age would be far more harshly condemned than before. Fielding Gray thus illustrates the blinkered stupidity of our age in refusing to consider the inner dynamics of beneficent love affairs rather than their outward conformity with the most superficial indications of equality.

Mercifully no reviewer seems yet to have claimed this is a "gay" novel, but as this is inevitable should Raven's books regain the popularity they deserve, I had better make it clear it is not. Fielding is just as interested in gaining heterosexual experience and Morrison rightly assumes homosexuality for boys usually "does not become a permanent taste, because they grow up and go out into a wider world which offers richer diversions."

Fielding Gray is definitely well worth reading for Raven's invariably witty and acute observation of human frailty, but anyone hoping for a more characteristic or moving story of schoolboy passion towards the end of its long heyday is recommended to try Roger Peyrefitte's Special Friendships instead.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a story of schoolboy passion set after its heyday and at Eton, https://www.amazon.com/dp/191457107X.

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schmerzhaft schonungsloser Blick auf die englische upper class.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in the late Eighties when I first encountered Simon Raven’s Alms for Oblivion sequence, Fielding Gray was the book I started with. The paperback edition available at the time was labelled 1-10, and this was clearly the place to start. The publishers of that edition had made the sensible decision to present the books in order of their place in the unfolding story rather than of original publication. Looking back, I’m glad I started with Fielding Gray as it is one of the strongest books in the series and hooked me so strongly that I ploughed my way through all ten books in just over a year, and all these years later here I am reading them all again. This time though, I’m working through them in order of original publication, which does throw a fascinating light on the play of events and the motivations of the characters as well as on Raven’s skill as a novelist.
The story takes us back to the school days of Gray, who we previously encountered in the third book in the sequence, The Sabre Squadron, set a few years later, and is rich with the sort of bad behaviour and moral ambiguity that are core themes of the series as a whole. We also get plenty of interesting background to two other significant characters in the books, the priggish but devious Somerset Lloyd-James and the ambitious, decent Peter Morrison, which throws new light on what we have already gleaned about them from the first three books, The Rich Pay Late, Friends in Low Places and The Sabre Squadron.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sound the Retreat by Simon Raven

10 out of 10





It is a supreme joy to find a fantastic, marvelous writer like Simon Raven and it is equally enchanting to know that there will be another eight volumes to read in exquisite bliss, for Sound the Retreat is only the second of the series and the first was the sublime Fielding Gray https://realini.blogspot.com/2020/09/... ...it is nonetheless baffling to find that both volumes have only about twenty five ratings on goodreads and Sound the Retreat only four reviews, five once this one will have been posted.



The background of the narrative is British India, between November 1945 and June 1946, a period of unrest, as the local population is pressing the ‘colonialists’ to retire, though not everybody is so enthusiastic about that, indeed, trouble will be caused in the story by the group that is protesting in order to…keep the British in, aware of the bloodshed that may – and in fact would – take place, once order is replaced by chaos and the Hindu majority would slaughter the Muslims that are in a minority and then the other way round…this is problem that plagues India to this day, as it is led by Modi, an individual with some skills, but a whole lot of shortcomings, one who had been a leader in one of the large states and in that position he had allowed the Hindu nationalists cause a lot of pain and eventually erase – if memory does not fail me here – one mosque and then the consequences would be dire.

It is politically incorrect to doubt in any way the catastrophic role played by the colonial powers that have been exclusively concerned with extracting riches and enslaving the natives, at least according to many, if not most of the new wave of thinkers, but since we are privileged to have such a small, maybe nonexistent audience, why not bask in that glory and say whatever we think, knowing that there is no reader out there – to reach this point anyway – that will be outraged and then protest – it did happen recently, when I posted a video stating that I boycott Mulan, because the actress in the main role had shown her support for the Chinese communists and that I do not care what her name and work is, she is of no consequence to me from now on and I was called an idiot and racist, only the stand I took is not against her race, it is because I have lived under communism and still pay the price today and hate communism, be they white, green or any color or race…



The British have brought some order and have done some good in India and elsewhere, this is my view, albeit yours truly is aware that they have also taken disastrous decisions and they have done a lot of harm – when one considers Brexit and the latest catastrophic mistakes, one has to admit that it seems unlikely that Boris Johnson would be able to manage a country as big as India, even if he could be a bit better than Modi – and this is debated in Sound the Retreat, title that indicates the most important act that will take place in the background, the end of the British Empire as such and the convulsions, conflicts that would ensue as a result – at the end of the rule of the Raj, the war between two parts of India would have cataclysmic results, many would die and the two countries, now nuclear armed, have been clashing ever since, the latest conflict taking place only recently, maybe it is less than a year since they have attacked each other…and alas, it is sure to happen again, we can only hope they will keep it at a low intensity.



Peter Morrison is the main character of this second novel and he is dispatched with his friends, Alister Mortleman and Barry Strange to a cadet officers ‘training unit, only to find that with the labor party now in power back home, the priority is to leave the subcontinent to its own people and try to enact a transition that will be as peaceful as possible, which would be a daunting, if not impossible task, given the magnitude of the problem, the existence of a Hindu majority bent on taking the minority out, physically, if not always, this is the ‘solution ‘they seek for most of the time, as the British troops will try to use restrain – indeed, they should take training in a different strategy, instead of learning how to fight the enemy, with tanks and heavy artillery – which is anyway pointless, as Alister opines, given the Armageddon capability of the new, atomic bomb that had been used in Japan – they should see how to face rioters.

Alas, the head of regiment where the three friends are posted does not see facing crowds of natives as a dignified enough task for his men and thus he does not allow for lectures on this type of exercise to be given, until his adjutant would try some lessons, under the guise that it would keep headquarters happy…only when the time comes, what he teaches, drawing a line in the middle of the street, getting behind the cover of some fixed barrier, would not apply in situations where troops had not had enough time to prepare and anyway, the configuration of the area is not such as to allow conservative, well defined rules to be imposed…



Sound the Retreat is enticing as both a comedy – and it is included on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, in the comedy section, under Alms for Oblivion, which is title of the whole Magnum opus, comprising ten volumes – and a splendid landscape, a fresco of the British ‘occupier’ just as they prepare to give the keys back, the various attitudes of the locals, the conflict that would soon become a tragedy, when masses of people of different faiths will attack each other, on a background where the British do not know exactly what to do and eventually might resort to abominable acts, like political assassination, eventually trying to eliminate the leader of a faction of Muslims that is creating unrest, in order to keep the colonial power in the country, for its army would be the only one that could prevent genocide.

Indeed, once the Viceroy is gone, the massacre of Muslims and Hindus would start and even the great leader, Mahatma Gandhi, would be murdered by one of the multitude of fanatics, and the Magnum opus is ever more outstanding in that it combines the humor with the depiction of a large scale Apocalypse, treating the reader to the humor of the competition between Gilzai Khan, the Moslem commander of the cadets for a good while, and Alister Mortleman, wherein the two have sex with prostitutes – called today sex workers – to establish who is more ‘manly’, we follow the antics of the same Khan, who has an intimate affair with Barry Strange – until superior officers find about it and , though they are tolerant of many things, homosexuality is anathema at that time, albeit technically the man is actually bisexual.

Meanwhile, Peter Morrison, is nearly trapped by another prostitute, who claims to have a child from him, she sounds the alarm with the authorities that in the climate where any such act from the intrusive colonial masters could create widespread riots are ready to discharge the young man in disgrace, until the creative Khan finds a way out…this would still be used as pressure later on, in order to make the now Intelligence officer find a way out for the same Gilzai Khan, rebel leader once he is out of the British Army…what a superb book!

[Corto · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far, this was the best of the "Alms for Oblivion cycle, probably because it's the most autobiographic.

I should say here, that I'm not reading the "Alms for Oblivion" cycle according to its internal chronology, but in the order they were written. Though in this fashion, the cycle is not a linear story, the dips and reverses in time add depth to the characters, and certainly make the plots of the individual novels more interesting. For two novels, they've been alluding to catastrophic events in Fielding Gray's life, and in this volume some of them are revealed. If I'd read this first, an element of mystery would've been missing from the previous novels.

Had I not been reading the cycle, or had I known more about this novel (I tend to purposely avoid detailed "back-of-jacket" book synopses), I might have taken a pass. Novels involving a strong element of fluid sexual orientation generally don't draw my interest, but this one is different. This is not a coming-of-age/coming-out story about a sexually confused and angst-ridden youth, but a novel that takes on the "English-Public School-Homosexuality" trope in a very non-sentimental (acidic, bitter) and straight forward manner. It's about the mistakes that some make as teenagers, either out of selfishness or as victims of pure chance, that can have irrevocable effects on the future- or at least change its course. If you're interested in reading this as a stand-alone book, that should be enough to recommend it.

As part of the Alms for Oblivion cycle, it (obviously)serves to add depth and texture to Fielding Gray- the most compelling character in the series. It also provides the genesis of the relationship between two other principal characters Peter Morrison and Somerset Lloyd-Jones.

Again, Raven is an incredible practitioner of the written word. Thoroughly eloquent. I've never read anything so melodramatic and trashy that required me to look up so many words, that 20 years ago, could've only been found in the OED.

[Alan Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon Raven's "Alms for Oblivion" series is one of the most original, sexy, intriguing sagas you'll ever read. Based upon a quotation from Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida", the series describes how the norms, taboos and values of the British upper classes have become increasingly irrelevant and dangerous in the post WWII world. Raven has little sentiment in his writings... most of his large cast of characters are self-serving, cynical, amoral, sleazy and uncaring, and some of them border on the sociopathic, yet they are inevitably interesting, and often are capable of acts of valor, loyalty or kindness that transcend their natures.

This novel, chronologically the first in the series (though not the first one written) focuses on the schooldays of two of Raven's most fascinating characters, Fielding Gray and Somerset Lloyd-James, (the first based on Raven himself, the other on William Rees-Mogg). It's a story of coming of age, sexual development, guilt, betrayal, moral dilemma and the search for identity.

We learn the foundations for Fielding's angst-ridden, yet hedonistic life, encounter the Machiavellan boyhood of Lloyd-James (truly a case of the child being father to the man), and meet a cast of amazingly well-drawn characters, most of which will pop up again in the rest of the saga. The dialogue is fast and cuts like a blade, the comedy is dark, and sexual encounters are never far away.

Not many novels will make you laugh, cry and get stiff in the same book. This one - and most of the others in the series - will!

[Heep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written with erudition and wit, the story is a nostalgic look at the protagonist's last year in a private English high school. Affection for a fellow student creates a very British scandal. The book's beginning, a solemn roll-call of school dead from WWII, is done in beautiful counterpoint. Although good throughout, the writing does not quite return to this level of brilliance until the last half.
It also made me reflect that I am a creature of the 20th Century. I am very comfortable with the storytelling and the assumptions on which it is founded - the absence of electronics and instantaneous communications, for example.
A friend loaned me the entire series of which this is book one. It is a big challenge, and I don't usually like reading a single genre or author back-to-back. Perhaps exception is justified here. The pages fly by in elegant prose knit by a tight narrative. The entertainment value is high. After all, reading doesn't need to feel like work.

[Djrmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in 1945, this is a story of what happens when the acceptaed school boy flirtations and crushes develop into something stronger and less accepted. Fielding, an upper level student at an all boy school, is attracted to a younger student. He pursues him, seduces him, but isn't ready when the younger boy wants to continue the relationship over the term break. An unhappy home life convinces Fielding that is is good to be wanted, despite warnings from other classmates that he's wrong to encourage the younger student. By the time he's ready to face the younger boy, something he feels responsible for setting in motion had gone horribly wrong. A very fast read, sad but honest.

[Robert Ronsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am revisiting the Alms for Oblivion series that I first read in my mid-20s about 50 years ago. This, the first in the series chronologically, is set in a public school not unlike Charterhouse, which Raven himself attended. It is a story of the morals and mores of the privileged classes.
In some ways it is an adult successor to the reading of my youth. I was brought up in a working-class household (like Keir Starmer, my father was a tool-maker) and was a voracious consumer of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven and Famous Five. I 'graduated' to Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings series, Bunter of course (both set in a public boarding schools) to the adventures of the Swallows and Amazons and their successors. What this books all shared was a focus on a world that was totally foreign to me – what it was to be a child of parents who did not need to worry where the next pound was coming from.
People talk disparagingly of class-envy and it is true that I have grown up with chips on both shoulders about 'privilege'. Probably it has been part engendered by my youthful reading. No doubt, to get back to the subject, my leftward political leanings were further developed reading about Fielding Gray and his lazy acceptance of the fact that, despite one door closing, his place in the order of things would always ensure that another would open.
The book is a much fun as I remember. Fifty years of reading and experience have allowed me to spot some of the clever stuff that's going on behind what appears to be a ribald morality tale. I'm glad I have returned to this and look forward to Simon Raven making me chortle some more as I take delight in his hedonistic puppetry.

[Tim Trent · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty standard Simon Raven stuff. A bit of scandalous behaviour and otherwise rather boring. I was told I'd like it by the boy I adored when he and I were 16 or so. I tell in Queer Me!: Halfway Between Flying and Crying how I came to read it.

The only part that held my attention was between Fielding and Christopher, and that was a pretty minor part of the book

[Davidg · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the strange thriller that was the third in the Alms for Oblivion series, this was far more conventional. It is the account of a post war public school education. It is all cricket and exams and obviously getting into Cambridge and crushes on other boys. Everything has to be genteel and the lower classes are there to be made fun of. However, unlike Anthony Powell, you get the sense that Simon Raven realises how preposterous the attitudes and behaviour of his class is.

[David Allen White · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago, twice, I think. I'm a great fan of Simon Raven. This book came up in a search because I'm currently reading Field Gray by Philip Kerr.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Summer term 1945, the young old boys return from the war in Europe to a Thanksgiving service. For Fielding Gray, the cricket season is at its height, the prizes won and even the school captaincy is within his grasp. Also among the elite is Somerset Lloyd-James, a spotty catholic boy full of ambition, scruples and useful information about Fielding's affections, which he may feel it is his duty to convey to the headmaster. Peter Morrison, already upright, warns Fielding against Somerset's intrigued and then leaves for his good regiment.

"Back from the holidays, Fielding wrangles with his parents about his future. His father, mean, lazy and vindictive, tries to sabotage his university prospects...

"Somerset's machinations work...the Head can only take the orthodox line...

"FIELDING GRAY is the fourth* in...(the) 'Alms For Oblivion Series'..."
From the flyleaf jacket of the 1967 uniform edition published by Anthony Blond.

I can't remember the first time I read this volume of the Alms for Oblivion series - it was probably back in the 1980s and I have to admit it was a great disappointment in many ways - here was supposed to be the origin of the whole wicked debauch that the rest of the Alms for Oblivion series chronicled and yet it was so absurd - our hero Fielding in his senior year at public school has a letch for another boy in his year - Christopher (which is really not the way these affairs usually developed - the classic boy-on-boy school story usually involved an older and younger boy) they get together Christopher has premature ejaculation, Fielding helps him wipe up and decides he finds it all a bit distasteful and sends Christopher off to bed and decides not to see him any more. Summer holidays start they both go home - Fielding has promised to visit Christopher but doesn't and in the end Christopher feeling ignored goes off and hangs around the local army barracks trying to pick up soldiers (in his school uniform if I remember rightly) gets caught and then tops himself. The reader can't help feeling that this is set up so Fielding feels he has behaved badly and when various events prevent him from going to Oxford and he is forced to enter the army (as an officer of course) Fielding feels he has both been cheated and justly punished for his failures. The most significant of his failures is towards Christopher his prematurely ejaculating school mate who, when he feels that Fielding has let him down goes off and hangs outside the local army barracks, in school uniform I think, trying to pick up soldiers. He is a singular failure and when reported goes off and hangs himself in Shane.

It is just absurd - I don't think even in the late 1940s a randy 17 year old schoolboy would be so bereft of clues about how to pick up a man that he'd hang around army barracks. Parks and public toilets were plentiful and well known as the haunt of the desperate. As for his over excitement with Fielding again I can't help feeling that no schoolboy would have been surprised or distressed . Late adolescence is the time when one spunk hardly meant the end of an evening or even a wank - multiple orgasms are the glory of adolescence and one of the major compensations only for all its other ghastly consequences.

This was the fourth in his 'Alms for Oblivion' series of books which was supposed to reveal the dirty under side of the establishment and the perversions of those who thought they were everyone's betters but honestly he is all tease - one can't help doubting how much sex he ever had, even as a boy because he doesn't write about it in any sort of believable way.

I have a great fondness for Raven and his novels and a more honest response would probably knock him a star, but then the problem is that Raven rights beautifully it is easy to overlook his plotting failures and even consider his novels worthy of another star. I have to much sentimental attachment to put him or his novels down so I don't mean to put you off reading Raven - his early novels can be quite good - and that goes for some of the first books in the Alms series - but while fun he is mostly silly.

I debated putting this novel down as 'queer' because so much of the boy on boy action that took place in boarding schools has really very little to do with anything but raging hormones and boys fixating in the only object available but in the end I did not. I don't think every novel that mentions or has a queer character, or a character with queer tastes should be shelved as of queer interest. Attaching it to this novel could be seen as false advertising.

* The ordering of the volumes in the series has been altered. Originally they were numbered according to their publication order which is why the jacket refers to this novel as the fourth in the series. Subsequently the series reordered chronologically. I personal prefer the original order because it was the way they were written and reads better.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, honestly not sure what to rate this book.