Advent 2

Simon Raven - the pen of an angel and the mind of a cad. I've blogged about him before - one of my favourite writers, most particularly for the brilliant roman fleuve Alms for Oblivion. He wrote to make money and Spike Milligan quipped that Raven would have adapted the phone book for television if someone had paid him. Good on him. Raven's most monumental achievement in that field was his twenty-six part adaptation of Trollope's Palliser novels for the BBC, screened in and around elections, power cuts and broadcast union strikes in 1974. Yes you did read that correctly, twenty-six episodes. The sort of thing that British television just doesn't do anymore.