It's Always More Complicated

Thanks to everybody for their lovely responses to my Mr Toad-like boastful posting yesterday.

In today's Guardian: the McClelland childless = selfish saga revisited with a letter from his daughter ('my dad can be an opinionated old sod at times') and an interesting and thoughtful article on abortion and religion from Karen Armstrong (former nun) - even if she does invoke that distinction between abortions undertaken for 'trivial reasons' and those which are 'tragically necessary' which I am always a bit dubious about.

Following my mention a few days ago of D. A. Nicholas Jones' Never Had It So Good (1963), I've been re-reading it and as before have been absorbed and impressed. The book is not without its faults, but as a non-patronising (if not uncritical) social panoramic novel it holds up very well. It is also not merely, as in the standard Angry Young Man tradition, critical of class, tradition, 'the establishment', it's critical and analytical about masculinity and manhood and is generally intriguing about gender and sexuality (even if there are some undeveloped subtexts). One might ask for the leading female characters to be given more to do, but they are not either misogynistic stereotypes or one-dimensional reward-dollies for the male protagonists. The novel ends with a rather embittered coda about the lack of real deep and lasting changes, which seems slightly ironic in the light of history: the major changes of the sixties were just about to burst upon British society. It really is the kind of novel when one wants to see where the author will go next and what he/she will do.

According to the biography on the back flap, what Jones did was go to Nigeria with his family to teach.