Book Review by Nicholas Lezard: Letters to absent friends - Last Post by Frederic Raphael, Carcanet £30

Since 2001, Frederic Raphael – author of The Glittering Prizes, screenplay writer of Far from the Madding Crowd and Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut – has been writing memoirs under the umbrella title Personal Terms. The sixth appeared in 2013; this volume, as its title suggests, will be the final one. How could it not be? He’s 91, for goodness’ sake (going on 92). Five hundred pages, not counting the (wholly necessary) index – he’s not making it easy for himself. And it’s not as if his style makes things much easier for any of us. Clotted, arch, arcane even, finicky and deeply open to parody. This makes it sound horrible but, strangely, I find it hugely entertaining, even when – especially when? – it seems to go beyond even self-parody. (As you can see, it’s also infectious.) Example (the ‘you’ here is Nabokov): ‘In your books, caressing the details delivers...

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