A Better Class of Person: An Autobiography

John Osborne was a British Playwright whose first major work "Look Back in Anger" put him in the first rank of Post- War British playwrights. He also wrote many other plays, including 'The Entertainer' and 'Inadmissible Evidence' This memoir focuses on his childhood and early years before he 'made it' Its descriptions of his working class family and the world he comes from are very grim indeed. There is a meanness of spirit and petty cruelty which pervades the family world he grew up in. His resentment and anger pervade the memoir . Clearly he had reasons to look back in anger, However the whole spirit of the work seemed to me so ugly and angry that I found reading the work a great chore. This is a book about the way people are, and not at all one about the way they should be. I am afraid that what deterred me above all was the sense that Osborne himself may have escaped to another world, but his spirit remained grudging, difficult, bitter and ungenerous towards others. Not my cup of tea.

John Osborne was among the first of the generation of "angry young men" to reach fame as a playwright in the 1950's. The title of the first part of his autobiography reflects the petty snobbery and attitudes prevalent of England before and after the second world war. This is a thoroughly readable book about a highly intelligent young man growing up in a dysfunctional, working-class family. There are many gems of descriptive writing, such as his description of his boyhood friend, Mickey Walls and the excerpt from his book about Max Miller. There is also a vivid evocation of life on tour with seedy theatrical companies and staying in "digs". The references to characters mentioned earlier become confusing after a while, but the book rarely palls.