Matthew Parris

Pleasant dipper-in. Lots of familiar quotes are included like Brendan Behan’s well-known put-down of critics, as being like eunuchs in a harem. The wit and venom of writers pronouncing on each other is especially notable: a whole host of contemporaries show up here mocking Henry James’s style and interests, similar too on Conrad and Trollope. There’s backbiting by or about E.M. Forster and Woolf and Huxley too. Happily, not all the contents are entirely scornful, but there is some trademark bile from Morrissey, and jibes directed at compiler Matthew Parris (“that little shit Parris with his perma-smirk” - Alastair Campbell), some nice digs at pseuds of yesteryear like George Bernard-Shaw, and plenty of funny-revealing quotes like Queen Victoria on King Lear (“A strange, horrible business, but I suppose good enough for Shakespeare’s day”). As the compilation was produced in 2016-7, it’s neat that they managed to squeeze in an addendum on our recent salvo of scorn around Brexit, Trump, and more. Trump’s face when persuaded to denounce the Charlottesville attack, one Twitter user wrote, “is the same face I made when my parents made me eat Brussels sprouts”.… (meer)

Parris is candid, and has been through a few adventures, so this is always readable. But as a stern judge of his own.conduct, and unable to resist an archness towards many others, this near-500 page memoir leaves a slightly sour impression. Mostly his focus is gossip and career advancement, and it's entertaining stuff, but he does try hard to do the right thing on the few areas that really matter to him - like gay emancipation, a live and still contentious issue at this 80s and 90s point. Good pen portraits of Thatcher, Powell, Major, Mandelson, and more. Smart judgements too, often in a pithy aside: "the liberals peeled away, as liberals tend to" (in UDI Rhodesia); William Hague's mother was right (about his being just too young for the party leadership) "as mothers tend to be".… (meer)