This biography opens with a vivid chapter on Raymond Williams's funeral. Entitled 'Prologue, in Memoriam', it transports the reader to Clodock Church, 'a plain little building' in the foothills of the Black Mountains. It is a comfortless day, Fred Inglis tells us. 'The light fell crooked and the road fell wrong.' Rooks caw speculatively on the wind, and the weather is appropriately Gothic too, a 'bitter cold' February day with 'vicious showers of sleet and snow'. The mourners make their way along the 'tatters' of the old, winding road, passing Harry and Gwen Williams's cottage, where Raymond grew up. Assembled in the churchyard, 'Raymond's young men' (as his wife, Joy, used to call them) are now middle-aged and showing signs of wear and tear, 'thinning and unkempt hair ... a bad back here, a heavy paunch there'. Sartorially, they are drabbies, 'awful old grey suits and worse black ties ... or else the ... uniform of the Left on parade, a dark old coat left open to the weather ... corduroy trousers ... Tuf boots'. Acting as MC for the occasion, Inglis introduces us to the mourners - Terry Eagleton, 'small, solid, mischievous'; Charles Swann, 'wheezing with his awful respiration'; Patrick Parrinder, 'silent, smiling, ironic', the best-dressed of the party; Tariq Ali with 'lustrous brown eyes' but (Inglis claims) 'a bit out of it all'.

LRB 4 July 1996 | PDF Download