‘Colossal Snob’? The Class-Ridden World of Simon Raven

Abstract

Simon Raven (1927–2001) was a satirical commentator on the foibles, absurdities, and random cruelties of upper-middle-class life in post-war England. As the British empire crumbled, he produced a wealth of novels, articles, and essays that set their stall against technology and progress.2 Instead, he turned his attention to a small but influential world of upper-class and upper-middle-class intrigue, sexual vice, and betrayal that represented the low stakes and scant rewards of those who enjoyed and competed for status and high office from the late 1940s to the 1970s. Peter Porter’s poem expresses the common conception of Raven’s novels as literary works crammed with vice, snobbishness, and folly, as the clay feet of those of high standing and in positions of authority are exposed. But unlike Evelyn Waugh, with whom he is sometimes compared, Raven does not feature in major surveys of the English novel, perhaps because, as John Lucas argued in 1972, ‘For all their show of satire of contemporary social mores, and for all their dedicated right-wing snobbishness, the fact is that one can’t take them seriously. As entertainment they repay reading; as serious novels they do not.’3