Murray Sayle
I picked up A Nice Girl Like Me solely because Rosie Boycott had just married my friend David Leitch and produced a charming daughter, Daisy. I found it the best book on alcoholism since (and perhaps including) The Lost Weekend with numerous sage asides on sex and success, those other two deadly addictions. Now that the author has retreated, sober, to the cork-lined room of matrimony, we should hear a lot more from her.
Hardly had I put down the riveting Rosie when her husband's Family Secrets arrived. Another (we all hope) retired tosspot, Leitch here continues the search for his parents begun in his splendid God Stand up for Bastards (they gave him away at eight days old, in the Russell Hotel.) With all but a missing sister now accounted for, Leitch manages to communicate an obses- sional interest in his casual kin, completing a fascinating demonstration of what a pair of talented writers, even if married, can make out of heartbreak and hangovers.
And then, sadly, there was Barefoot Reporter, the posthumous collection of pieces by my compatriot Richard Hughes from the Far Eastern Economic Review. The bad book is not Barefoot Reporter, which is marvellous, but the multi-dynasty epic sweet-and-sour Chinese blockbuster Hughes might have unwisely attempted had he not made his way, most days of his long life, to some oriental bar, there to entertain and refresh his friends from his bottomless keg of anecdote and reminisc- ence. The ultimate Old Asia Hand, Hughes figures largely in the works of Ian Fleming and John Le Cane, but who needs them when we have the man himself in his own words, his talk (rare gift) simply written down. Hughes' own book contains few journalistic disclosures. (although Burgess and/or Maclean once recognised him shambling out of a PECTOPAH in Moscow), but, more valuably, shows a contribution to human happiness one wise and witty man with a glass in his hand can make. With all that, Hughes lived to 78, standing his last round a fortnight before his death in January this year, and making his last deadline the same day.
Perhaps, if he had drunk less, Hughes might have written more, perhaps not, but in his case the distillers would seem to have nothing to hang their heads over. Rum people, writers. Rum stuff, booze.
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