If nothing else, this biography has to be a candidate for the Title of the Year prize. The fact that it’s about Willie Donaldson gives it a good shout, too, at Subject of the Year.
Just amble through the CV: feckless squanderer of inherited shipping fortune; impresario of Beyond the Fringe; ponce (though he was frequently and, he felt inaccurately, described as a pimp); submariner; author of the Henry Root Letters; lover of Carly Simon and Sarah Miles; unsuccessful glass-bottomed boat entrepreneur; geriatric crack-fiend; self-confessed pervert; corrupter of innocence; balletomane; Old Wykehamist.
‘Disgraceful’ he frequently was. The tone of Terence Blacker’s book — somewhat too personal and too partisan to be a proper biography, yet more than a memoir — is captured by the way that word is used in the title. Blacker approaches Donaldson — a friend and collaborator for many years — as many seem to have done: the vocabulary is of disapproval but the effect is of congratulation.
There’s room for both.
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