Book review: Quite a Good Time to Be Born: A Memoir: 1935-1975

DAVID LODGE , one of Britain’s most cherished novelists, turned 80 at the end of January. As he admits in the first volume of his autobiography, Quite a Good Time to Be Born: A Memoir: 1935-1975, he has been fortunate in the time and place he came of age.

He wasn’t, for example, born on continental Europe in an occupied zone, rather a sleepy London suburb, so he got to experience the war — what he describes as “the hinge on which 20th century history turned” — without incurring any of its horrendous consequences, and he got to live through some dramatic social changes in the western world.