A Time of Renewal: Clusters of Characters, C.P.Snow and CoupsAll this, and Rugby School, brought Philip Snow into the slipstream of acquaintance and friendship with figures of eminence in a variety of fields. Consequently, the book reads like a mini-Who's Who of the great, the good and the outstanding at home and abroad - in cricket, arts and letters, politics, the armed services, the law, academe, royalty...the variety is endless - over two or three generations. His judgement is sharp, shrewd, sometimes robust, but always fair and objective and the result is a series of finely-etched vignettes making up a fascinating social history of England from the 1950s. His friendships in Fiji endured as did his love of cricket, and these came together in his role as Fiji's representative on the International Cricket Council for over 30 years. The main theme, however, is his relationship with CP Snow and also with his brother's novelist wife, Pamela Hansford Johnson. |
