If you have endured my pergrinations through the blogosphere for any time, you would not expect this year to pass without a reference to the man who, in my scabrous moments, is my favourite author, that old rascal Simon Raven. I am not a great one for re-reading any more than I re-watch many films. These are rules to which there are lots of exceptions. Most particularly I am probably in my fourth joyous saunter through Raven's Alms for Oblivion sequence. In mid-ramble I happily let Places Where They Sing entrance me. It is the sixth volume in the sequence.
Raven puts these words in the mouth of Robert Reculver Constable, a priggish don of whom he does not, I judge, wholly approve. Typical of Raven however the sentiments that Constable spouts would find favour with Raven. Nuance is all my dear.
So much for Tom and Daniel. There remains the question of the left-wing joker ... The Rev. Oliver Clewes, the College Chaplain. He is one of those new progressive clerics who hardly seem to believe in God at all and apparently picture Christ as some kind of revolutionary guerilla from South America. As a nominal Christian, Clewes is mistrusted by most of the left, while as a declared socialist he is mistrusted by all of the right. The few people remaining merely despise him as an equivocating opportunist. The one important thing to be said of him, therefore, is that he will discredit whatever cause he may adopt in the eyes of everybody, so that one can only hope he will not support a good one.
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