Simon Raven

Simon Arthur Noël Raven was a notable English author, essayist, dramatist, and raconteur. Born in London on December 28, 1927, Raven attended Charterhouse but was expelled in 1945 for homosexual activity. He then joined the army and served until 1948 before quitting to go to college. Raven studied English literature, specializing in the Classics, at Kings College Cambridge. In 1951, he married Susan Kilner out of obligation after getting her pregnant, but the two divorced in 1957. Raven returned to the army but had to resign due to gambling debts.

Raven's writing career spanned forty years, and he was known for causing controversy, amusement, and offense. His obituary in The Guardian noted that he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh's Captain Grimes, and the Earl of Rochester. His unashamed credo was "a robust eighteenth-century paganism....allied to a deep contempt for the egalitarian code of post-war England." E W Swanton called Raven's cricket memoir Shadows on the Grass "the filthiest cricket book ever written." His characters are often described as "guaranteed to behave badly under pressure; most of them are vile without any pressure at all." Despite these criticisms, Raven's writing was also praised for its beauty and wit, with one critic describing him as having "the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel."