Kindred spirits: Adrift in literary London

The first volume of Jeremy Lewis's autobiography, "Playing for Time", covers his years at Trinity College, Dublin, and ends with the youthful hero starting out on a career in publishing. This book follows his ensuing progress, ever onwards and upwards, via bibulous lunches and consequently slumbrous afternoons dozing at his desk, and his unexpected elevation from the office floor to the boardroom. Along the way, he meets and befriends many of the most colourful and eccentric figures of post-war literary life, including Geoffrey Grigson, Kingsley Amis, Jan Morris and Patrick Leigh Fermor, and trembles before a succession of terrifyingly fierce and efficient publishing dynamos.