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The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg, poet, philanderer, legislator and outlaw - His Life and Indiscretions [Paperback]

Francis Wheen (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 2 April 2001 | ISBN-10: 1841155756 | ISBN-13: 978-1841155753

Francis Wheen’s brilliantly comic portrait of one of the 20th-century’s great characters, Tom Driberg: wit, parliamentarian, serial cottager, alleged communist spy and friend to the Kray brothers.

There are few people for whom marriage was so ill-suited yet well attended: at Tom Driberg’s were cabinet ministers and mobsters, Betjeman and Waugh, but it was Osbert Lancaster who commemorated the sheer extraordinariness of the occasion, and with it celebrated the social life of Driberg, and an era of Englishness now passed into history when the Brideshead generation sang the ‘Red Flag’:

Friends of yours and friends of mine, Friends we always thought were dead
Friends who toe the party line, Friends we know are off their head
Labour friends who’re gratified Girl-friends, boy-friends, friends ambiguous
At being allowed to kiss the bride. Coloured friends from the Antiguas
Artistic friends, a few of whom Friends ordained and friends unfrocked,
Are rather keen to kiss the groom. Friends who leave us slightly shocked,
Friends from Oxford, friends from pubs, All determined not to miss
And even friends from Wormwood scrubs. So rare a spectacle as this!

Product details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Fourth Estate (2 April 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1841155756
  • ISBN-13: 978-1841155753
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 3.2 x 19.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 156,089 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

From the Back Cover

In his obituary The Times described Tom Driberg as 'an unreliable man of undoubted distinction . . . he was the admiration and despair of his friends and acquantances'. But what friends, and what acquantances. And what glorious unreliability. A Brideshead-generation Oxford Socialist, Tom Driberg was also a flamboyant and promiscuous homosexual, an intriguer, gossip, friend to the Sitwells and the Krays (though not on the same evening) and one of the most colourful characters of the London social set.

Living in an era when the establishment looked after its own and the press looked the other way, Tom Driber was able to shatter almost every idea of polite society from its epicentre. His was a glorious indulgent life that included a highly public wedding in 1951 just a few years after he had concluded an extravagant series of affaris with soldiers, sailors and airmen. Driberg had had a good war by his own unique standards. As could be truthfully be siad of the rest of his life.

About the Author

Francis Wheen is the author of the bestselling biography Karl Marx, a Guardian columnist and a regular contributor to Private Eye. Like Driberg he was educated at a very English minor public school and has been a gossip columnist , to the anxiety of many.

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Customer Reviews

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4.8 out of 5 stars
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Affectionate, irreverant and funny 12 Dec 2001
By rupert.higgin@virgin.net
The remarkable life of Tom Driberg is enlivened but not outshone by the warmth and wit of Francis Wheen's narrative. Never were subject and author better matched than in this affectionate biography - an absolute treasure trove of incident and adecdote about a Zeligesque figure who contrived to be present at practically every defining moment of 20th Century history, from the Bright Young Things of the 20s through the Spanish Civil War and the prototype New Labour of the 1950s. Dispassionate, irreverent and above all glowing with good humour. Certainly the best book I have read all year, and probably one of the funniest.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Rake's prowess 10 Feb 2011
By bowsider
What a fantastic romp - joy and horror from start to finish. Admiring where the subject deserves it, warm where he was cold, stepping back where he steps forward. A wonderful piece of work with all the best qualities of journalism and history combined.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars the indiscreet charm of the bourgeoise 7 Dec 2012
By WorkshyFop
Francis Wheen's account of this extraordinary man's disreputable life begins with a Hollywood flourish. Driberg's publishers intend to release the late peer's autobiography, sparking mass panic among almost everyone who knew him. Would he tell the Bevan story? Or the truth about the Callaghan rumour? The reader can picture a director cutting between scenes of journalists, Lords and ministers exchanging panicked phone calls.

Wheen doesn't shy away from the salacious side of Driberg's private life, in fact The Soul of Indiscretion positively revels in the sleaze, at turns witty, anecdotal, gossipy and bitchy (Wheen describes actress Jane Russell as a `raison-brained fruitcake' for example). One can't help but think the subject would have approved thoroughly.

As an account of one man's foibles, vices and beliefs, and as a social history of the mid twentieth century, this book gets probably my heartiest recommendation yet. Affectionately written without being sycophantic, well-researched without being dry and gossipy without being tawdry, this book is the perfect memorial to Tom Driberg, Lord Bradwell.
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