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Ifs and Buts

Personal Terms V

Frederic Raphael

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Series: Personal Terms
Categories: Memoirs
Imprint: Lives and Letters
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Aug 2011)
9781847778819
£14.95 £13.45
Paperback
(Pub. Mar 2011)
9781847771223
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  • Dubbing was made a mild pleasure by the vanity of authority. A pianist who had to be a member of the Musicians’ Union played the theme from Beethoven’s Ninth with two fingers in order to provide the final false note which witty ignorance demanded. ‘E flat all right?’ ‘Fine,’ I said, as if I had something more chic in mind, but had agreed to compromise.  

        



    June 1978: Frederic Raphael is in a studio for the dubbing of his television play Something’s Wrong, and a routine moment is captured by his wry alertness to vanities and foibles. Ifs and Buts continues the sharply stylish extracts from the journal of time spent, in the words of The Sunday Times, with ‘one eye on life’s greasy pole and the other on the eternal verities’. Both, for Raphael, are subjects for curiosity, scepticism and entertainment. Ifs and Buts includes encounters with David Garnett and Rebecca West, with their still-vivid memories of H.G. Wells and Lytton Strachey, D.H. Lawrence and Bloomsbury; an account of working with Diana Dors, and of not working with Diane Keaton. Alongside are darker reflections on public and private life, on what it is to be a Jew, on terrorism and the cruelties within relationships.

    Cover painting: © the estate of Sarah Raphael 2011
    Cover design: StephenRaw.com
    Praise for Personal Terms

    Frederic Raphael's notebooks reveal the 'chip of ice' that, according to Graham Greene, lurks in the heart of a writer... Spiky, acute and immodest, Raphael's notebooks offer stimulating entertainment. For an insight into the writer's mind, you'll find nothing better - Christopher Hirst, the Independent

    Frederic Raphael was born in Chicago in 1931 and educated at Charterhouse and St John’s College, Cambridge. His novels include The Glittering Prizes (1976), A Double Life (1993), Coast to Coast (1998) and Fame and Fortune (2007); he has also written short stories and biographies of Somerset Maugham and Byron. Frederic ... read more
    Praise for Frederic Raphael 'Frederic Raphael leaves unlocked a virtual postbox of unsent letters. Insistently addressing "you", the real subject is "I". He beards old friends, family, collaborators and antagonists; settling scores; mentioning his Oscar once or twice; allowing his wit free rein.'
    Brian Morton, The Tablet
    'This book contains tremendous erudition and intelligence, blistering scorn for mediocrities and frauds, tenderness for a few favourites and irony at its most shapely and elegant.'
    Richard Davenport-Hines, Literary Review
    'Raphael's intelligence and acerbic wit are undiminished... Whether you've lived through most of the years covered in Last Post or not you'll be bound to find these letters to the dead who cannot answer back immensely entertaining.'
    Brian Martin, The Spectator
    'A hilarious and disillusioned page-turner.'
    Peter Green, The TLS
     'Against the Stream offers many insights into Raphael's "double life". An American who made his career in Britain. A Jew who went to Charterhouse and Cambridge. A Hollywood script-doctor who read Ancient Greek for fun. Vain, sharp-tongued, but the sort of truth-teller Britain needed then and needs now.'
    David Herman, Standpoint

      'In these notebooks, Raphael shows himself alert to every vanity but his own, a shortcoming that, far from repelling a reader, becomes part and parcel of the their fascination. He is one of those writers who most reveals himself in his acerbic anatomy of others.'
    Anthony Quinn, Telegraph
       'Aphoristic, lapidary and sumptuously reflective by turns, Personal Terms is a joy to read both for Raphael's prose and mental powers. It is a book of iridescent intelligence, seductive charm, urbane temper and unflagging delight - indeed a minor masterpiece.'
    Times Literary Supplement

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