Frederic Raphael: A Spoilt Boy [2003] hardback

Frederic Raphael shared his days at Cambridge with us in his bestselling novel Glittering Prizes, now, in this evocative, painfully honest memoir he tells us about the first eighteen years of his life. His early years were spent in America and it was not until he was six that he and his parents sailed for England. Evacuated to Devon in the war, Freddie's prep school days were happy. His thirst for learning and easy intellect made him selective in his choice of friends, his embarrassment at his Jewish origins made him secretive. A scholarship to Charterhouse followed. It was here that he experienced the anti-semitism that coloured the rest of his life. A major scholarship to read Classics at St John's Cambridge where he meets the girl who will become his wife is the beginning of a happier period. This is a painfully honest and revealing memoir of a sensitive, intelligent boy. The first eighteen years of a remarkable man.