Read "Clinging to the Wreckage",
John Mortimer's volume of
autobiography. The description of his life from
birth to and including
WW2 is the best. Scorched by an unhappy
love affair, he says he considered going to live in the country and writing the definitive history of
Lord Byron's schooldays. This made me curious about what happened during Byron's schooldays that they deserve their own book (unfortunately a
biography of
Percy Shelley, which was the only contemporary reference book I had at hand, didn't say).
Last week read Patrick Redmond's novel "The Wishing Game", about some horrible events in an English boarding-school for boys in the 1950s. Noticed that the boys spoke in the language of the 1970s/80s, though; but then it's apparently the dude's 1st novel. A few months ago I read Angela Lambert's novel about some horrible events in an English boarding-school for girls in the 1950s, and the idiom was correct, but the story was dreary. Hope I get socks and handkerchieves for Christmas, so I don't have to buy 'em myself.