He told it like it was

Cardinal Newman and James Lees-Milne had these things in common: both were Roman Catholic converts; both were predominantly homosexual; each wrote about himself with brilliance; and both wrote lousy novels. Osbert Sitwell shared three of these attributes, but was not a Catholic convert and teased his boyfriend David Horner for becoming one.

Some will think it heretical, but I am tempted to add to the list of great self- portraitists who wrote indifferent novels, Compton Mackenzie, Anthony Powell and John Fowles. I recently reread Mackenzie’s Sinister Street (1913-14), wondering whether it could be adapted as a Merchant-Ivory type of film. It has fine passages of prose; but the whole thing is so shapeless and meandering that a movie script would be a very tall order. (In 1935, a disastrous film was made of Mackenzie’s novel Sylvia Scarlett: the New Yorker said, ‘It seems to go wrong in a million directions.’ I think that was Mackenzie’s fault, for in 1936 the same studio and producer — RKO and Pandro S.