In this week’s New Statesman, journalist and academic John Mullan reviews the memoirs of David Lodge (see earlier post) and Antonia Fraser (My History: A Memoir of Growing Up).
He sees the two writers as a contrast between “prole” and “posh,” respectively, using their relationships to Evelyn Waugh as an example of their differences:
The young David Lodge relishes the novels of Evelyn Waugh that he borrows from Deptford Public Library; Fraser knows Waugh as a family friend. Lodge goes to Germany to stay with a rackety aunt; Fraser holidays in Italy with the country’s prime minister. Lodge studies T S Eliot at university; Fraser dances with him at a ball.