An Unmentionable Man

These new stories give strong support to the claim that their author is “one of the very few left-wing imaginative writers of literary ability who have not betrayed their principles”... Reflecting on his achievements in a very long career, one cannot help thinking that Upward presents in his work a reliable record of an extraordinary period of history. His unique blending of the past, in art as well as in politics, still has lessons for the future. We should be grateful that a devoted artist has lived so intensely through so much. – from the Introduction by Frank Kermode. The first four of these new short stories by Edward Upward, written in his nineties, form a closely linked sequence – almost a single story – and could be described as ‘realistic dreams’. They are vivid and often satirical, the product of long experience, but are neither cynical nor finally pessimistic. In certain inherited ways they resemble Upward’s earlier fantasies ‘The Railway Accident’ and Journey to the Border, both also published by Enitharmon. Of the last two stories, ‘Fred and Lil’ is straightforwardly realistic and humanly sympathetic, while ‘With Alan to the Fair’ deals with love, hate and political extremism in serious and in highly comical episodes.