Simon Raven; British Novelist, TV Writer

Simon Raven, a novelist as famous for his cad-like behavior as for his wit, has died. He was 73.

Raven died Saturday at the Royal London Hospital, according to Sutton’s Hospital, a charitable home in London that had sheltered him since 1995. The cause of death was not announced.

Illustrating Raven’s behavior, London’s Daily Telegraph cited his reply to a telegram years ago from the divorced wife he married only after impregnating her. She implored: “Wife and baby starving send money soonest.” He replied: “Sorry no money suggest eat baby.”

But despite his decadent behavior--the Cambridge graduate resigned from the army before his gambling debts forced him out--he was a prolific writer, beginning with “The Feathers of Death,” a tale of homosexual romance in the army, in 1959.

Of his 36 books and numerous television scripts, Raven is best known for his series of 10 autobiographical novels collectively called “Alms for Oblivion.” They range from “Fielding Gray,” the name he gave his alter ego protagonist, in 1959, to “The Survivors” in 1976, and describe the scandalous path of schoolboys--Raven and his friends--coming of age over several years.

A Times reviewer called “Fielding Gray” a “perfect little gem of a story.”

Productive as he was, Raven was far more interested in profits than prizes, commenting frankly in a World Authors autobiographical note in 1975:

“I consider myself to be a professional writer, which is to say that I write for money. I enjoy my work, am at times absorbed by it, and I take a lot of trouble. But my essential aim is to do what I have been asked to do within the stipulated time, and to receive in return punctual payment in full,” he wrote.

His TV screenplays included “The Pallisers,” based on novels by Anthony Trollope; an adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s “Love in a Cold Climate,” and “Edward and Mrs. Simpson,” a dramatization of Edward VIII’s abdication.

Openly a bisexual and wanton lecher, gambler and debtor, Raven once said he was “unimpressed by virtue or enthusiasm” and considered Christian morality “an insult to the intellect.”

“On balance, I find the world an entertaining place but shall be well content to leave it, holding with Horace that it is unseemly in the old and feeble to linger at the banquet, where they merely spoil the pleasure of other people.”

Raven is survived by a son.