Likely lads in their day

Simon Raven’s first novel, The Feathers of Death, was published in 1959

Simon Raven’s first novel, The Feathers of Death, was published in 1959 when I was in my second year at Cambridge. We fell on it with glee, as I remarked, a few weeks after Raven’s death, to a fellow-novelist, somewhat to her amazement. ‘I’ve never read any of his books,’ she said. ‘I think my husband has.’ Not so surprising perhaps. I doubt if he ever had many devoted female readers. What attracted us to the novel was not so much its for the time decidedly daring story — army officer’s affair with blond, blue-eyed drummer Malcolm Harley — as the tone and style. This was nicely summed up by the Sunday Times reviewer, J. D. Scott, who found it difficult to believe that such an ‘absurdly romantic, preposterously reactionary’ novel should be so worthy of praise. But this of course was just what we loved about it.