Bevis Hillier
A BOOK that will, I think, be recognised as a classic is. Little Legs: Muscleman of Soho by George Tremlett (Unwin Hyman, £12.95) — the 'as told to' recollections of Royston Smith, a dwarf who used to be an iron bar hit-man for the Kray brothers. It is funny and moving, as well as intermittently violent. If Tremlett had been unscrupulous enough to pass off Smith's story as a novel, be would have been hailed as a new Dickens. (And there is something of Quilp in Smith.) It should be turned into a West End stage monologue, right in the centre of Little Legs's Soho patch.
Biographies: the second volume of Michael Holroyd's Bernard Shaw (Chatto & Windus, £18), of course. Also Peter Parker's Ackerley (Constable, £16.95). I would have thought that any biography of J. R. Ackerley could only have been superfluous to what he wrote about him- self. Parker proves me quite wrong. He writes about Ackerley with just the right mixture of sympathy and irony. I enjoyed another book by a Peter Parker (Sir P.P., former chairman of British Rail), For Starters: The Business of Life .(Cape, £16.95). Not at all the collection of plat- form platitudes one might expect: Sir Peter is not afraid to show his vulnerabilities as well as his successes, and he is a top-class jokesmith. Also, he has taught me how to be a good manager, overnight. Now all I need is something to manage.
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