Margrave of the Marshes
by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft
Corgi, HK$128
John Ravenscroft, aka British broadcaster John Peel, was writing about a Mexican brothel where he lost his virginity, being buggered at boarding school not being quite the same thing, when he dropped dead from a heart attack on a working holiday in Peru. Peel's wife, Sheila Ravenscroft, picks up his notes and journals at page 165, and reviewers say her 'delicious, slightly surrealist, throwaway sense of humour' caught the 'self-deprecating egotist' better than he might have done himself. Peel probably listened to more music than anyone else living or dead, but, as The Economist said in its obituary: 'His demeanour on the radio was one of pure delight: delight in the new, the unexpected and the good.' The Independent calls Margrave of the Marshes a 'fragmentary and multi-faceted volume' that captures the contradictions of a man whose Latin teacher declared him 'cheerfully incompetent' and who once got a letter from a mother thanking him for 'helping Christopher with his career' - Christopher being the Damned drummer Rat Scabies.