RAVEN, SIMON (ARTHUR NOL)

born Dec. 28, 1927, Leicester, Leicestershire, Eng. English novelist, playwright, and journalist, known particularly for his portrayal of the mid-20th-century upper classes of English society in Alms for Oblivion and for television dramatizations of works by Aldous Huxley and Anthony Trollope. Raven's most important work is the novel sequence Alms for Oblivion, which consists of The Rich Pay Late (1964), Friends in Low Places (1965), The Sabre Squadron (1966), Fielding Gray (1967), The Judas Boy (1968), Places Where They Sing (1970), Sound the Retreat (1971), Come Like Shadows (1972), Bring Forth the Body (1974), The Survivors (1976), The Roses of Picardie (1980), and An Inch of Fortune (1980). His television dramatizations of the 20th-century novelist Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point (shown 1968) and the 19th-century English novelist Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now (shown 1969) and The Pallisers (shown 1974), and Edward and Mrs. Simpson, based on Frances Donaldson's Edward VIII (shown 1978), also reached wide audiences. Raven was educated at Charterhouse, Surrey, and King's College, Cambridge. Among his other writings is a long essay, The English Gentleman (1961), and an autobiography, Shadows on the Grass (1982).