Cheering us up
Ian Jack, 15 September 1988
In for a Penny: The Unauthorised Biography of Jeffrey Archer
by Jonathan Mantle.
Hamish Hamilton, 264 pp., £11.95, July 1988,0 241 12478 6 Show More
by Jonathan Mantle.
Hamish Hamilton, 264 pp., £11.95, July 1988,
“... In the opening pages of Thomas Mann’s novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, the hero debates a question which has always worried him: which is better for the careerist, to see the world small or to see it big? The small view has its attractions. Great statesmen and empire-builders must see the world this way, Krull thinks: like a chessboard, with human pieces that can be manoeuvred coldly and boldly as the player rises above the mass of mankind ... ”