Although Nicholas Mosley has written two volumes of family biography and a volume of memoirs, he has, until now, avoided writing about his World War Two experiences.The son of Sir Oswald Mosley who, as the leader of the British Union of Fascists, had been jailed with his second wife, Diana (one of the Mitford sisters), early on in the war ostensibly as a security risk. Despite this, Nicholas was dispatched to join his regiment, the Rifle Brigade, as the Allies fought their way up t...

"The object of life is impossible; one cuts out fabrication and creates reality. A mirror is held to the back of the head and one's hand has to move the opposite way from what was intended." In these closing lines from Impossible Object, one has embodied both Nicholas Mosley's subject of love and imagination, as well as his unmatched lyric style. In eight carefully connected stories that are joined by introspective interludes on related subjects, the author pursues the notion, through the ...

As a novelist, biographer, editor, and screenwriter, Nicholas Mosley has always been concerned with the central paradox of writing: if by definition fiction is untrue, and biography never complete, is there a form that will enable a writer to get at the truth of a life? In Efforts at Truth Mosley scrutinizes his own life and work, but examines them as a curious observer, fascinated by the constant interaction of reality and the written word.As a life, it has been colorful,...

Catastrophe Practice, in the form of three plays with prefaces and a novella, follows six characters trying to find their way through some catastrophe that is less in the world outside than in their minds. Drawing upon catastrophe theory to examine the discontinuities in human personality and our tendency to progress suddenly rather than smoothly, the six characters struggle to disrupt traditional ways of being. These characters feel that conventional ways of interpreting the worl...

Judith is an aspiring young actress and the mistress of a writer on a popular satirical magazine. Her life has increasingly become a dangerous mixture of drugs and self-delusion. When she eventually suffers a breakdown, she seeks healing in an Indian ashram run by an eccentric and even possibly mad guru. But what is at the back of appearances? How calculated is the self-destructiveness from which a new order might emerge?Judith returns to England and joins up with Bert, one of a fe...

This vivid and strikingly witty novel examines the contradictions between the public face and the private experience. Nephew to the prime minister of England, eighteen-year-old Bert tries to make sense of the grown-up world around him, a colourful crowd of television personalities, politicians, young, Trokatires, pop stars, and eccentric relatives. With the help of his laconic psychoanalyst, Bert questions the relation between exterior and interior reality, while Mosley himself questions a...

Returning to London from a trip to the West Indies, an aspiring writer encounters a bewitching trio of friends whose magic lies in their ability to turn any situation into fantasy. Previously out of place in the world, the narrator falls in love with the young brother-sister pair of Peter and Annabelle, as well as the older, more political Marius. Reality soon encroaches upon the foursome, however, in the form of Marius's ailing wife, forcing the narrator to confront the dark emptiness and...

'On a dark night a person searches on the brightly-lit ground under a lamp-post. A passer-by asks - For what are you searching? The person says - For the keys to my house. The passer-by says - Is this where you lost them? The person says - No I lost them in the dark, but this is where the light is.'A retired academic and writer lies in a New York hospital bed. He has come there from his home in London to appear as a pundit on television, only to be knocked down by a car. Formerly an...

This Whitbread Book of The Year Award winner for 1990 is the final novel of the "Catastrophe Practice" series. Set in the 1920s and 30s it tells the story of two young radicals, Max and Eleanor, who meet, love, separate and come together again during the maelstrom of the Spanish Civil War.

This is a tribute for one of the best African American comedians to ever come to stage. This is a tribute to Martin Lawrence.