Nobs & Snobs

by Michael Nelson

What are the ingredients that separate the nobs from the snobs? Is money enough? Can they be learned? Are they bred.
Above all, what is it about the nobs that enable them to get away with anything and reveals the snobs for what they are?
In this amusing and revealing study of the English upper classes in our own day, Michael Nelson examines the qualities which still distinguish the upper crust from their imitators, how they dress, how they speak, their attitudes toward sex and marriage, food and drink, their clubs, their education, their occupations, their sports and pastimes, their homes, their politics, their role in society.

171 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Michael Nelson (known as ‘Mickey’) was born in 1921. He worked as a journalist before the Second World War, and during the war worked as secretary to John Lehmann, a prominent publisher and man of letters, and served as a captain in the Royal Army Service Corps. After his demobilisation, he lived with his boyfriend in Winchester and owned a bookstore there before meeting Rachel Holland, who knew Nelson was gay but married him anyway; the two remained married the rest of their lives. Nelson and his wife relocated to London, where he was well known in the drinking establishments of Soho. Nelson’s first novel, Knock or Ring (1957), which concerned the illegal practices of the ‘ring’, a group of booksellers who conspired to fix auctions and share profits among themselves, drew on Nelson’s own experiences as a bookseller and received good reviews. His second book, A Room in Chelsea Square (1958), also available from Valancourt Books, was published anonymously, and has gone on to become a gay classic. His other books are Blanket (1959) (published under the pseudonym ‘Henry Stratton’), When the Bed Broke (1961), Captain Blossom (1973), Captain Blossom Soldiers On (1974), Nobs & Snobs (1976), Captain Blossom in Civvy Street (1978), and Fear No More (1989). Michael Nelson died in 1990.