This, say Barbara Skelton's publishers, is the 'second - and some people will be relieved to hear, final - volume of her riotous autobiography'. On page one of volume one there is a quotation from Harriette Wilson about the meaning of the term 'gentleman' - a subject not really very close to Skelton's heart. For an English autobiographer, she seems wonderfully free from snobbery, whether plain or inverted. But the presence of Harriette Wilson signifies because, like hers, these are the memoirs of a grande horizontale.

LRB 11 January 1990 | PDF Download