Shadows on the Grass

If you have ever been puzzled by the English expression "it's not cricket...", this book will do much to increase that confusion. All the anecdotes Raven includes in this memoir are based around cricket games of one sort or another, and they all, without exception, reveal the author and the English upper classes behaving in the worst possible way: Petty revenge, public urination, various odd sexual activities, excessive eating and drinking, the defrauding of shopkeepers and bookmakers, and all manner of bad sportsmanship.

Raven's masochistic streak ensures that he himself is shown in a worse light than anybody else, but there's also a certain pleasure in reading about the misdemeanours of associates of Raven's who had become pillars of show more English society by the time the book appeared (a Tory cabinet minister, the editor of the Times, various Oxbridge dons...). Those who are described as acting in ways that are actually criminal appear under pseudonyms, of course, and we don't have to believe all the stories (in some cases, it's clear from Barber's biography that Raven changed the facts quite significantly). Obviously Raven (or his publisher) knew exactly how far he could go without ending up in court.

Candid though Raven seems to be here, there is one silence which becomes very conspicuous when we compare his account with Barber's. There is not a single mention of his marriage. This is perhaps a laudable wish not to cause his ex-wife and son more distress, but it does require him to massage the facts quite considerably at a couple of points, notably when he explains his reasons for being forced to resign his army commission.

I tend to take the view that reading about ball games is almost as tedious as watching them, but I have to admit that Raven, writing about cricket, is still enjoyable. Even if you don't follow all the technicalities, there's a real pleasure in his use of the arcane terminology of the game, and most of the time it's perfectly clear how everything fits into the narrative.

As usual with Raven, you don't have to agree with his (real or assumed) attitudes to enjoy this book. You may think him the most awful bounder, or an unpleasantly unrepentant advocate of elitism and privilege, but it's his fluent writing and effortless storytelling ability that draws you in and allows you to find so much to laugh at in the nastiness of human nature.

In the end, though, I just had to drool at the thought of the dinner-party Raven describes in the penultimate chapter: the host was E.M. Forster, and the other guests beside Raven were Joe Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood. I think that might almost have been worth travelling to Cambridge for... show less