The London Lover by Clancy Sigal
An exuberant, careening memoir, a modern day Tom Jones, rich with the sights, sounds and people from a life led to the full in Britain and America in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s If Fielding’s Tom Jones were alive in post-war England he might have been Clancy Sigal, the American author of this restlessly curious memoir. Honest and devious, faithful and lustful, a mass of plucky contradictions, Clancy first arrived in London in 1957. He was broke, homeless and, according to his FBI file, a dangerous ‘subversive’. Over the next three decades, Clancy was to wander the soot-stained streets of London, devouring as much as life could offer him. This is the story of that time. Exuberant and irrepressibly charming, Clancy blazes with the love of a feisty city. After days spent avoiding police on the 88 bus and nights in a snug berth under Charing Cross Bridge, he arrived on Doris Lessing’s doorstep. The two began a tumultuous affair that plunged Clancy into the intellectual, cultural and political world of London – and even saw him feature as Saul Green in The Golden Notebook. From the birth of the CND and his affair with Lessing, a relationship ‘so open you can hear the wind howling through the cracks’, to therapy with R. D. Laing and wondering whether the entire world was on acid, Clancy details it all to constantly illuminating effect. Underneath all of these encounters is the character of Clancy himself: funny, hapless, warm-hearted and a self-professed ‘crazy American’ who was also riddled with sexual insecurities and deep anxieties. Call it luck, charm or sheer lack of good sense, he escaped with a cracking good story.
An exuberant, breathless sprint through London in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies… It’s bright, boisterous and extremely funny -- Francesca Carington * Tatler *
[Clancy’s] scapegrace adventures are described with so much vitality and scabrous wit you feel as charmed as one of his serial conquests … Marvellous * Spectator *
[Sigal] was a tummler of note, a real-life Zelig who found himself with astonishing frequency at the ringside of history, rubbing shoulders with many of its high rollers and low riders … The compulsion to be near the hot centre never left his restless heart * London Review of Books *
Clancy Sigal lived twenty amazing lives and many of them are in this wonderful book -- Paul Theroux
Clancy Sigal’s memoir has all the storytelling verve, arresting candour and personal fearlessness that made his reputation over half a century ago -- David Kynaston
No one tells his story better than he does himself in this highly entertaining book -- Lara Feigel
[Clancy’s] scapegrace adventures are described with so much vitality and scabrous wit you feel as charmed as one of his serial conquests … Marvellous * Spectator *
[Sigal] was a tummler of note, a real-life Zelig who found himself with astonishing frequency at the ringside of history, rubbing shoulders with many of its high rollers and low riders … The compulsion to be near the hot centre never left his restless heart * London Review of Books *
Clancy Sigal lived twenty amazing lives and many of them are in this wonderful book -- Paul Theroux
Clancy Sigal’s memoir has all the storytelling verve, arresting candour and personal fearlessness that made his reputation over half a century ago -- David Kynaston
No one tells his story better than he does himself in this highly entertaining book -- Lara Feigel
Clancy Sigal was a novelist, journalist, screenwriter and political activist. Chicago-born, he was an American G.I. in Occupied Germany. Working as a talent agent on the Sunset Strip in the mid-fifties, he was blacklisted, fled McCarthyism, and moved to the UK. Living in London for many years, he worked as a film critic, playwright and a BBC correspondent. He returned to Los Angeles in the late 1980s, and later became a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism. He died in 2017.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781408885802 |
| ISBN 10 | 1408885808 |
| Title | The London Lover |
| Author | Clancy Sigal |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Year published | 2018-05-03 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |