13 NOVEMBER 1999, page 60

Spankers And Scuttle-butts

Hugh Massingberd BLUE AT THE MIZZEN by Patrick O'Brian HarperCollins, £16.99, pp. 262 I n the course of a peripatetic, not to say profligate, life I have recklessly rid myself......

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virile genius Jane Gardam SECRETS OF THE FLESH: A LIFE OF COLETTE by Judith Thurman Bloomsbury, £25, pp. 596 hen Colette was 61 the brilliant American journalist, Martha......