Picture 1 of 2

Stock photo

The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg, Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and - Picture 1 of 2

The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg, Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and - Picture 2 of 2

The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg, poet, philanderer, legislator and outlaw - His Life and Indiscretions by Francis Wheen (Paperback, 2001)

5.01 product rating

bestpriceworldwide (9348)

96.7% positive Feedback

Price:

£14.22

Free postage

Estimated delivery Mon, 18 Aug - Wed, 20 Aug

Returns:

60 days return. Buyer pays for return postage. If you use an eBay delivery label, it will be deducted from your refund amount.

Condition:

New

In his obituary, "The Times" described Tom Driberg as "an unreliable man of undoubted distinction...the admiration and despair of his friends and acquaintances." An Oxford Socialist, Driberg was also a flamboyant and promiscuous homosexual, an intriguer and a gossip, and a friend to the Sitwells and the Krays. Living in an era when the establishment looked after its own and the press looked the other way, Driberg was able to shatter almost every notion of polite society. His was a famously indulgent life that included a highly public wedding just a few years after he had concluded an extravagant series of affairs with soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Francis Wheen's previous book was the highly praised "Karl Marx: A Life."

About this product

Product Information

Francis Wheen's brilliantly comic portrait of one of the 20th-century's great characters, Tom Driberg: wit, parliamentarian, serial cottager, alleged communist spy and friend to the Kray brothers. There are few people for whom marriage was so ill-suited yet well attended: at Tom Driberg's were cabinet ministers and mobsters, Betjeman and Waugh, but it was Osbert Lancaster who commemorated the sheer extraordinariness of the occasion, and with it celebrated the social life of Driberg, and an era of Englishness now passed into history when the Brideshead generation sang the 'Red Flag': Friends of yours and friends of mine, Friends we always thought were dead Friends who toe the party line, Friends we know are off their head Labour friends who're gratified Girl-friends, boy-friends, friends ambiguous At being allowed to kiss the bride. Coloured friends from the Antiguas Artistic friends, a few of whom Friends ordained and friends unfrocked, Are rather keen to kiss the groom. Friends who leave us slightly shocked, Friends from Oxford, friends from pubs, All determined not to miss And even friends from Wormwood scrubs. So rare a spectacle as this!