Dubbing was made a mild pleasure by the vanity of authority. A pianist who had to be a member of the Musicians’ Union played the theme from Beethoven’s Ninth with two fingers in order to provide the final false note which witty ignorance demanded. ‘E flat all right?’ ‘Fine,’ I said, as if I had something more chic in mind, but had agreed to compromise.  

    

June 1978: Frederic Raphael is in a studio for the dubbing of his television play Something’s Wrong, and a routine moment is captured by his wry alertness to vanities and foibles. Ifs and Buts continues the sharply stylish extracts from the journal of time spent, in the words of The Sunday Times, with ‘one eye on life’s greasy pole and the other on the eternal verities’. Both, for Raphael, are subjects for curiosity, scepticism and entertainment. Ifs and Buts includes encounters with David Garnett and Rebecca West, with their still-vivid memories of H.G. Wells and Lytton Strachey, D.H. Lawrence and Bloomsbury; an account of working with Diana Dors, and of not working with Diane Keaton. Alongside are darker reflections on public and private life, on what it is to be a Jew, on terrorism and the cruelties within relationships.

Cover painting: © the estate of Sarah Raphael 2011
Cover design: StephenRaw.com

Praise for Personal Terms

Frederic Raphael's notebooks reveal the 'chip of ice' that, according to Graham Greene, lurks in the heart of a writer... Spiky, acute and immodest, Raphael's notebooks offer stimulating entertainment. For an insight into the writer's mind, you'll find nothing better - Christopher Hirst, the Independent