The Oldie

Letters to absent friends

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By Frederic Raphael

Carcanet £30

Since 2001, Frederic Raphael – author of The Glittering Prizes, screenplay writer of Far from the Madding Crowd and Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut – has been writing memoirs under the umbrella title Personal Terms.

The sixth appeared in 2013; this volume, as its title suggests, will be the final one. How could it not be? He’s 91, for goodness’ sake (going on 92). Five hundred pages, not counting the (wholly

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