Ticks and Crosses

Overview

A writer’s wry observations about the glamorous worlds of Hollywood and literary London during the second half of the 1970s are offered in this autobiography. Though Frederic Raphael is only incidentally concerned with the rich and famous and has little interest in names and gossip, he notices and comments on the discrepancies between public and private faces to convey the texture of life around him. His notebooks, never originally intended for publication but contained in this compilation, are exercises in candor, precise observation, and wit, creating an engrossingly stylish and enduring chronicle of his times.

Reviews

"Raphael's sharp wit spares no one, not the sacred monsters of the movie business and the literary world, nor the incidental characters whose unguarded stories and personalities become the material for fiction. Least of all does he spare himself. Rough Copy is a self-portrait of a writer whose precision and honesty are both entertaining and searching." —The Sunday Telegraph on Rough Copy

"A wonderfully bracing read . . . the richness and energy of the writing will carry you through." —Marcus Berkmann, The Spectator, on Personal Terms

Author Biography

Frederic Raphael is the author of After the War, Coast to Coast, and The Glittering Prizes. Also a leading screenwriter, his work includes the screenplays for the Academy Award–winning film Darling, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and Far from the Madding Crowd.