Jew Made in England - Hardcover

Blond, Anthony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1857252004 ISBN 13: 9781857252002

Publisher: Timewell Press, 2004

A rake's progress by one of publishing's great eccentrics--the memoirs of Anthony Blond. Richly entertaining...delightfully unstuffy...plenty of juicy gossip --Mail on Sunday

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Review:

A beguiling companion, whose gifts as a storyteller keep one spellbound until the last fruity, mischievous page. -- James Knox, Country Life

Blond has written a genial, entertaining book......it is also wickedly amusing, occasionally touching and unusually well-written -- Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph

Blond is a witty and elegant writer......he is a likeable and lively companion -- Jeremy Lewis, Sunday Times

It is hard not to relish a book that contains so many disobliging stories -- Peter Parker, Evening Standard

The scent that rises from this florid concoction is...pungent, gamey and unrepentantly louche. I ended up charmed by its honesty. -- D.J. Taylor, The Spectator

From the Inside Flap:

Jew Made In England is a Rake's Progress by one of the great eccentrics and, without doubt, one of the most innovative and idiosyncratic publishers of the twentieth century. Charismatic, daring and outrageous, Anthony Blond harvested talents as diverse as Harold Robbins and Jean Genet, Spike Milligan and Graham Greene. An inveterate promoter of the young, he gave over seventy writers their first chance, not all of whom possessed the precocity of Tom Stoppard, the durability of Simon Raven or the acumen of Burgo Partridge ('Do you want a life of Diana Dors or a history of orgies?') Although Blond's various publishing enterprises all came to assorted grief, he left behind a legacy of brilliance which few others will ever match.

Along the way Blond encountered many of the great and not so good of our times, providing him with a treasure chest of wonderfully entertaing anecdotes about figures as illustrious as John Betjeman, as notorious as Robert Maxwell and as obscure as Sir Anthony de Hoghton, a wealthy profligate who ended up a beggar in Sloane Square, in sharp contrast to the fate of fellow Blond cronies Jimmy Goldsmith, John Aspinall and Alan Clark.

Raised in the Jewish haute bougeoisie - his father the founder of the Royal Court Theatre, his step-mother a Marks as in Marks and Spencer - and educated at Eton and Oxford, Anthony Blond has produced an intimate, often touching memoir of his childhood, his education and his bizarre collection of relatives, wives, children and friends. Blond writes frankly and hilariously about his bisexuality - whether running aground with a young Sarah Miles on the Beaulieu River or running amok in Australia with a handsome beach boy - and, most movingly, of his profound awareness of his own Jewishness.

Funny, erudite, sharp and slyly self-depreciating, Jew Made in England is a delightful celebration of a free spirit which no social, sexual, racial, religious or geographical boundary has been able to contain.

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