Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy Books

Half An Arch is the compelling autobiography of one of the most distinctive English writers of the late twentieth century, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. In The Rise and Fall of the English Nanny, The Public School Phenomenon, and Doctors, Gathorne-Hardy explored three apparently familiar institutions with unprecedented originality and depth. Now the biographer of writer and adventurer Gerald Brenan and American sexologist Alfred Kinsey brings the same rigour, perception and sensitivity to bear on the story of his own life, as he chronicles, vividly but without sentimentality, the brutal decline in the fortunes of the clever and colourful Gathorne-Hardy family in the aftermath of two world wars.

When Cyril Bonhamy applies for a job as a Father Christmas he is surprised at how burly the other applicants are. He gets the job but spends more time reading than with the children. Then one of the burly Santas send him a note.