A life indecently full of fun and games

Hugh St Clair

ANNE GLENCONNER CALLS Oh What a Lovely Century, “a wonderful journey through twentieth century history”. It is not a journey you will find in most accounts of the period, but the young, moustachioed, army officer on the cover of this book seems to have had a gay old time, in both senses of the word. Roderic (Roddy) Fenwick Owen was born in 1921 and died in 2011, and kept diaries amounting to over a million words which he privately published in three volumes called Funny, Living and Loving. These sources were edited down to 200,000 words with Owen’s permission with the proviso “that nothing be cut on the grounds of decency”. In the mid-twentieth century, a confident Eton and Balliol man with little money but the right connections could go where —…

You're reading a preview of

The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2021

DiscountMags is a licensed distributor (not a publisher) of the above content and Publication through Zinio LLC. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered on our website, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of DiscountMags. DiscountMags does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, truthfulness, or usefulness of all or any portion of any publication or any services or offers made by third parties, nor will we be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information contained in any Publication, or your use of services offered, or your acceptance of any offers made through the Service or the Publications. For content removal requests, please contact Zinio.