Never quite in Queer Street.(Book Review)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 26-JUN-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

JEW MADE IN ENGLAND by Anthony Blond Timewell Press; 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 299, ISBN 1857252004

Some years ago the author of this entertaining if characteristically diffuse memoir made a pass at me. The venue was the balcony of the tennis-court-sized flat in redeveloped Bermondsey that Blond shared with his second wife, Laura Hesketh, and the exact words spoken were as follows:

BLOND: Come outside, my beautiful boy. TAYLOR: Fuck off, Anthony.

By this stage in the proceedings--I had been helping our man to arrange his library, by the way--it was too late to get home, so I spent a somewhat nervous night on the sofa, molested, as it turned out, only by the cat. In the morning, by way of a thank-you, Blond presented me with an inscribed copy of Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster's wonderful compendium, Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure, which he had published as long ago as 1968. 'I've written "with gratitude for the evening of July 29th...

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