CUTS AND BRUISES

The first volume of Frederic Raphaels notebooks, Personal Terms, was greeted in the TLS as a small masterpiece. With the publication of Cuts and Bruises, the third volume, we can see the sequence unfolding into a major literary achievement. Cuts and Bruises concerns the 1970s, during which Raphael travelled widely (not least to Hollywood, which yields a mordantly sweet and sour account of figures such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and John Schlesinger) and wrote the acclaimed television series The Glittering Prizes. Raphael is only incidentally concerned with the world of the famous, though, and has little interest in names and gossip except to notice the discrepancies between public and private faces and to convey the texture of life around him. Greece remains an abiding passion, and the conduct of Greek friends during the last months of the Colonels tyranny leads to surprising reflections on exile and return. Raphaels notebooks, never intended for publication, are exercises in candour, precise observation and wit. Cuts and Bruises adds to the growing impression that Raphael is creating an engrossingly readable, stylish and enduring chronicle of his times.