Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 2001) was an English author, playwright, essayist, television writer, and screenwriter. He is known for his louche lifestyle as much as for his literary output.

Expelled fromCharterhouse School, he was commissioned in the infantry inNational service, before studying atKing's College, Cambridge. Unable to earn a living as a writer, he rejoined the Army, but soon resigned, rather than be court-martialled for'conduct unbecoming', on account of his gambling debts.

Declaring that he wrote only for people who shared his own standards, he never attracted the mass market, and had to be rescued by publisherAnthony Blond, who paid him a regular wage on condition that he stayed out of London and concentrated on his writings, many of which Blond published. The arrangement lasted for over 30 years.

Raven is remembered for his ten-novel sequenceAlms for Oblivion and its baroque, supernatural sequelsThe Roses of Picardie andSeptember Castle; as well asThe Feathers of Death, an exploratory early army novel dealing with homosexuality between officers and "other ranks". He also wrote scripts for the television drama seriesThe Pallisers (1974) andEdward & Mrs. Simpson (1978).

Born on 28 December 1927 inLondon,^[1] he was the eldest of three children. His father, Arthur Raven, had inherited a fortune from the family's hosiery business, and lived a life of leisure.^[2] His mother Esther, née Christmas, a baker's daughter, was a distance andcross-country athlete who represented England against France in March 1932.^[3] He was educated first at Cordwalles preparatory school nearCamberley,Surrey, then as a scholarship pupil atCharterhouse, whence he was expelled in 1945 for homosexual activities.^[4] Amongst his school contemporaries wereJames Prior,William Rees-Mogg,Oliver Popplewell andPeter May. After completing national service he enteredKing's College, Cambridge, in 1948, to read classics.

Although he possessed a first-class intelligence, this was not matched by his application, and his university career was punctuated by regular crises over money, misbehaviour and an apparent inability – or, more likely, unwillingness – to connect actions with their consequences. His intelligence garnered him only an upper second, a degree which would not normally have gained him a studentship to read for a doctorate. That it did so may be attributed, essentially, to his personal charm, which gained him credit with the Fellows responsible for awarding scholarships. He was awarded a studentship (graduate fellowship) to study the influence of the classics in Victorian schooling, but this soon gave way to pleasure-seeking and his thesis was never seriously addressed.^[5] In 1951, he married Susan Kilner, a graduate fromNewnham who was expecting his child; the marriage was from duty, as he made clear, and afterwards, he studiously avoided her.^[6] A son, Adam, was born in 1952. (The couple divorced in 1957.) Raven, his scholarship funds exhausted, withdrew from King's,^[7] and attempted to earn a living as a writer, gaining a small income as book reviewer forThe Listener. He also wrote a novel, which proved unpublishable because of its libellous nature, and only emerged almost 30 years later asAn Inch of Fortune. Seeking a firmer livelihood, Raven decided to rejoin theBritish Army.

During his earlierNational Service, Raven had briefly served as an officer cadet in theParachute Regiment, and in 1947 was on a posting inIndia, during the final months of British rule there. He was subsequently commissioned into theOxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, before being seconded to the77th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment,Royal Artillery atRollestone Balloon Camp inWiltshire, where he saw out his service.^[8] In 1953, after university, he secured a regular commission with theKing's Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI), serving inWest Germany andKenya, before receiving a home posting toShrewsbury. It was during this period, when he was still married to Susan, that he sent his notorious telegram to her in response to her telegraphic plea for money: "Sorry no money, suggest eat baby". Such a callous response suggests that he cared nothing for his wife and child, although in fact he diligently provided for Adam's education and welfare. During his Shrewsbury posting he gambled heavily at local race meetings, and he was soon in severe financial straits following a "disastrous sequence of slow horses". Faced with the prospect of a court-martial for "conduct unbecoming" he was allowed to resign quietly, to avoid scandal in the regiment.^[9] This episode he later described with candour inShadows on the Grass.

At almost 30 years of age he had no career or prospects, but from his studies of the classics he had developed a lucid writing style, derived, as he said, from the Army's admirable instruction to be "brief, neat and plain". This, allied to his ready and disrespectful wit, was allowing him to survive precariously in journalism when, in 1958, he was employed by publisherAnthony Blond: "I had picked him up throughHugh Thomas who was editing a symposium for me, calledThe Establishment. Simon was billed to do the piece on the Army". Blond financed him while he wrote his first published novel,The Feathers of Death (1959). Blond was impressed enough to offer him a contract to continue writing for him, on condition he lived away from London, and paid off Raven's debts. "This is the last hand-out you get", he was told. "Leave London, or leave my employ". He moved to lodgings inDeal, Kent, and was paid (reportedly) a £15 wage by Blond.^[10] As a consequence of this arrangement, during the remainder of his working life, Raven became one of Britain's most prolific writers in a range of genres including fiction, essays, personal reminiscences, polemics, theatre, screenplays and magazine journalism. He was at various times compared withEvelyn Waugh,Graham Greene,Anthony Powell andLawrence Durrell, but his voice was his own: "Raven came nearer than other novelists to exposing, in the grandeur of its squalor and the dubiety of its standards, the times he lived in and saw through".^[11] His own view of his craft was less exalted; in the words of his writer-character Fielding Gray in the novelPlaces Where They Sing (1970): "I arrange words in pleasing patterns in order to make money".^[12]

He had a fascination for the supernatural, first manifested in his early novelDoctors Wear Scarlet, which features Balkanvampires (though they are practitioners of vampirism as a sexual deviation rather than an actual supernatural manifestation) and was cited byKarl Edward Wagner as one of the thirteen best supernatural novels.^[13] The Gothic themes became stronger in later works such asThe Roses of Picardie,September Castle, parts of theFirst-Born of Egypt sequence,^[14] and the 1994 novellaThe Islands of Sorrow.

Although he acquired an enthusiastic and loyal following, he was never a top-seller in terms of the mass market. Quoted by Brooke Allen: "I've always written for a small audience of people like myself, who are well-educated, worldly, sceptical and snobbish (meaning that they rank good taste over bad)".

His ten-novel sequenceAlms for Oblivion is usually regarded as his best achievement –A. N. Wilson thought it "the jolliestroman-fleuve"^[15] – though it is likely that he gained wider public recognition for his TV work, especially the adaptation ofThe Pallisers (1974) andEdward & Mrs. Simpson (1978). As he grew older his rate of output lessened, and there was deterioration in its quality,^[2] but he was still being published in the late 1990s, his last book beingRemember Your Grammar and Other Haunted Stories (1997), a collection of ghost and supernatural short stories.

Raven's book of anecdotes and reminiscences,Is there anybody there? said the Traveller (Frederick Muller 1990) was withdrawn after a series of libel action threats, including a writ from Anthony Blond.^[16] Thereafter he planned, or at least threatened, to write a new workAll Safely Dead, in which, safe from thelaws of libel, he could "expose" various deceased luminaries from the British social, academic, political and literary scenes, but the book was never written.^[17]

Throughout his life, Raven pursued a hedonistic lifestyle which included eating, drinking, travel, cricket, gambling and socialising. He spent what he earned, and after 34 years in Kent at Blond's behest he finally moved to London on securing lodgings in theLondon Charterhouse, the almshouse historically associated with Charterhouse School. Here he led a quieter version of his former life. In 1993, he was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature. A biography of Raven,The Captain, written byMichael Barber, was published in 1996. In 1997, he appeared withMelvyn Bragg in aSouth Bank Show devoted to his career, in good spirits and without regrets. His health continued to fail, however, and after a series of strokes^[18] he died in London on 12 May 2001, aged 73.

Raven's obituary inThe Guardian observed that, "he combined elements ofFlashman,Waugh'sCaptain Grimes and theEarl of Rochester", and that he remindedNoel Annan, his Cambridge tutor, of the youngGuy Burgess.^[19]

Among the many things said about him, perhaps the most quoted was that he had "the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel".^[20]E. W. Swanton called Raven's cricket memoirShadows on the Grass "the filthiest cricket book ever written". Typically, Raven's response to this was to ask Swanton's permission to quote this opinion on the book's jacket.^[21] He has also been called "cynical" and "cold-blooded", his characters "guaranteed to behave badly under pressure; most of them are vile without any pressure at all".^[22] His unashamed credo was "a robust eighteenth-century paganism ... allied to a deep contempt for the egalitarian code of post-war England".^[2]

• Note: His first novel,An Inch of Fortune, written circa 1951, was not published until 1980

The 10 novels cover the period 1945 to 1973 and centre on a group of upper and upper middle class characters, forming anovel sequence, if a somewhat loosely structured one. The early novels are robust satires of the English upper set of the mid-1950s, but the later tend to a more detached and philosophical tone, becoming concerned with the occult and supernatural, and including strange happenings.

This sequence is a continuation ofAlms for Oblivion, with many of the same characters, but with storylines tending to centre on the "next generation" and the introduction of darker, mystic themes. These books were written strictly for money, and received little critical acclaim,^[2] but Raven had fun killing off many of the survivors from the earlier sequence, usually in absurd and/or humiliating circumstances.

Note:The English Gentleman was also published asThe Decline of the Gentleman

(this table is not necessarily complete)

He also wrote features and articles for:The Listener;Encounter;London Magazine;Spectator;New Statesman and other magazines and journals

• Royal Foundation and Other Plays, Anthony Blond 1966

Note: The US title forIncense for the Damned was:"Bloodsuckers"

• Michael Barber:The Captain: The Life and Times of Simon Raven, London : Duckbacks, 2001,ISBN 0-7156-3138-1

• Brooke Allen: "Who Was Simon Raven?":The New Criterion, April 2003 (onhttp://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/simonraven-allen-1756)
• Michael Barber: "The Captain: The Life and Times of Simon Raven",Gerald Duckworth, 1996ISBN 0-7156-2786-4
• Obituary,The Guardian, 16 May 2001 by Michael Barber
• Obituary,The Telegraph, 15 May 2001
• Obituary,The New York Times 17 May 2001 by Douglas Martin
• Obituary,The Independent 1 August 2006 obit of Adam Raven by Thomas Thirkell
• "The Gothic World of Simon Raven" atInfinity Plus

• Simon Raven atIMDb
• Simon Raven atLibrary of Congress, with 39 library catalogue records

• 1927 births
• 2001 deaths
• King's Shropshire Light Infantry officers
• Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
• People educated at Charterhouse School
• Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
• Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry officers
• English bisexual men
• English bisexual writers
• English male novelists
• 20th-century English novelists
• 20th-century English male writers
• English LGBTQ novelists
• Bisexual novelists
• Bisexual male writers
• Screenwriters of Sexton Blake
• 20th-century British Army personnel
• Military personnel from London
• British Parachute Regiment officers

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from November 2020