Cultural Reinforcement

Another big up for The Overgraduate. Stephen Fry (aka Clever Bastard/National Treasure) is reading his latest memoirs on Radio 4 and it turns out we have something in common. Stephen Sondheim has never phoned me up for a friendly chat, nor have I been on the West End stage. Nor am I referring to our shared bipolar disorder. Nor even to our mutual acquaintance with Professor Nick Craddock - Fry is patron of Craddock's pioneering work on mental illness and we bought Craddock's house off him. Bloody small world isn't it.

No, what we have in common is an admiration for Simon Raven's Alms for Oblivion sequence of novels. Fry was reminiscing about a lunch with Mark Boxer (no, never have though I did meet his wife, Anna Ford - long story) and his story took in Boxer's illustrations for an edition of Anthony Powell's more famed (and rather less mucky) sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time. Don't worry I'll get to the point in a minute. Fry said that the Powell novels sit on his bookshelf next to the Raven and that he prefers the latter. Bloody coincidence - that is exactly how my shelves are arranged and how my tastes run. Like Powell, love Raven. If they'd let me cheat a bit on Desert Island Discs I'd take the entire Alms sequence with me. Funny. And rude. But mostly funny. That Stephen Fry knows a thing or two.