An English Affair. Richard Davenport-Hines
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Source ISBN: 9780007435845

Ebook Edition © January 2013 ISBN: 9780007435869

Version: 2019-09-24

Dedication

For Jenny, Christopher and Hugo, and never forgetting Cosmo

Epigraph

Though most English men and women cannot ‘let themselves go’, they love to think and read about people who do throw off inhibitions, either with sex or violence – provided they are punished.

Geoffrey Gorer, ‘This is the English’, The People, 30 September 1951

Snobbery – of all kinds – and prurience are the two most obvious vices of this country.

‘Anatomy of Hysteria’, Spectator, 15 November 1957

One thinks immediately of all the dreary little snobberies, the triviality, the emptiness, the susceptibility to stupid vogues. How drab and provincial we have become! How enslaved to gimmicks! English inventiveness and energy, which used to be an example to the world – have they dried up altogether, or is it simply a bad period we are going through? The two great inventions of the English, their political system and their literature, both seem at the moment rather dwindled and shabby. The parliamentary two-party system has become, whether temporarily or forever, a mere contest between public relation outfits, with professional ad men in the back room.

John Wain, ‘The Month’, Twentieth Century, July 1959

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Prime Minister

Chapter 2 War Minister

Chapter 3 Lord

Chapter 4 Doctor

Chapter 5 Good-Time Girls