['Vamp Till Ready'] takes us, roughly, from [Fuller's] time as a solicitor's articled clerk in London in the early Thirties (Fuller was 20 in 1932) up to, more or less, the present day. That is to say, through his conscripted days in the Royal Navy ('The Andrew'), postwar solicitorship with the Woolwich, Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, Governorship of the BBC, the novels and the poems….

But, as with 'Souvenirs,' although there is a ground bass of strict chronology, the variations in time and the various themes interweave throughout without much regard for strict tempo. My musical metaphor is no doubt faulty; but nevertheless the models here are Proust and Powell. While Dicky Umfraville doesn't occur anywhere in the background, it wouldn't come as much of a surprise if he did. A lot of this, with its Soho phoneys, eccentric colleagues and nicely remembered detail, is very funny. All...