Tricks of Memory

Peregrine Worsthorne emerges from Tricks of Memory more a picaresque anti-hero than a pundit. From the earliest pages when he describes resisting being given an enema by his mother to the later accounts of interviewing American presidents and other VIPS, the memoir is frank to a fault. The author casts an ironical eye on his own private life and on the lives and characters of his friends and enemies, not to mention on some of the more colourful public figures of the times through which he lived. Journalism and politics certainly get their fair share of space. But the chapters which the author obviously enjoyed writing most are those describing an unusual childhood and eventful schooldays.