The Last Buccaneer

Poet, writer, veteran and cricket devotee, Alan Ross’s brilliant editorship of the London Magazine kept alive a literary tradition.

The life of Alan Ross throws light on the whole period in which he lived. Born in Calcutta and shaped by his experience of the Royal Navy in the Second World War, Ross emerged as one of the most versatile literary figures of his generation – a poet of real distinction, a memoirist, a travel writer, and, for decades, the most admired cricket writer of his age.

But it is as an editor that he left his deepest mark. For more than fifty years after the war, Ross played a role in Britain's cultural life that no one else did, or could: he linked the literary London of Cyril Connolly, John Lehmann, Horizon and New Writing with a younger generation of novelists, dramatists, travel writers and poets who appeared, or cut their teeth, in the pages of the magazine he owned and edited for forty years – William Boyd, Hilary Mantel, Graham Swift, Deborah Levy, Paul Theroux, Tony Harrison, Pankaj Mishra, and, going back to the early 1960s, Derek Walcott.

If one thing characterised Ross's life, it was a gift for bringing together worlds that are usually kept well apart – literary and sporting, establishment and outsider, old guard and new.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR DAVID CRANE

‘Magnificent … by far the most enjoyable account of the battle I have ever encountered. Crane has had the brilliant idea of interweaving a fast, colourful narrative of the battle with the story of what was happening in Britain … it is a social and cultural panorama, taking in everything from murderers and vicars to portrait-painters and prize-fighters … [Featuring] countless beautifully observed moments … Crane has a superb eye for fascinating little nuggets’ Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Mail

‘It will be hard to match the sheer verve and brilliance of David Crane’s evocation. Frame by frame, like a great stop-motion film, we see … heroes, villains, the innocent, the fortunate and damned, and the merely damned lucky. Crane weaves hour by hour diverging and coalescing human dramas of the day with deft originality. Here literary art trumps television drama at its best. It paints a brilliant continuous action drama of Britain then, and in doing so suggests an awful lot about Britain, its tastes and foibles, today … a book to die for’ Robert Fox, Evening Standard

‘A fascinating snapshot … It’s beautifully written, absorbingly researched and paints a vivid canvas where the mundane details are as fascinating as the momentous battle’ Sunday Express

‘Strikingly urgent and vivid’ Mail on Sunday

‘Of all the big battalions of books marking the bicentenary of the battle of Waterloo, this has to be the best. Crane has used the bloody campaign as a telescope, bringing into sharp focus not just the carnage … but the state of Britain itself … The result is a rich feast: dramatic, poignant, funny, gruesome and tragic by turns. Crane selects a small cast to people his narrative, and involves us in their destinies without ever losing sight of the bigger picture’ Nigel Jones, Spectator

‘Sheer quality… In giving us a multifaceted portrait of the Regency age, he makes us think again about the battle and its impact on the British’ Literary Review