Once famous above all for his classic novel series about the misdeeds of English society in the 1950s and 1960s, "Alms for Oblivion", Simon Raven is now also recognized as a travel writer, a reporter at large of the seamier side of English upper-class life, and a commentator on the sexual mores of gay London. Expelled from Charterhouse "for the usual thing"; he was for a time, an officer in the British Army; he gambled heavily on the horses for years, was often in debt, drank too much and had a rich and uncommonly varied sex life. But what distinguished him was, as was said, "he had the mind of a cad but the pen of an angel". This selection of his journalism contains an array of pieces on army life, cricket (another obsession), sex, school days and travel.