Norman Lewis, the travel writer (A Dragon Apparent

has died at a great age. His obituary is a better read than the average

modern novel. Sample: “He eventually set up a chain of camera shops, having

by this stage met his first wife while driving a Bugatti whose previous

owner, a Hindu, had converted it to resemble a yacht, complete with decking,

portholes and an image of the elephant god, Ganesh. Lewis’s bride,

Ernestina Corvaja, was no less exotic. She was the daughter of a Mafia

lawyer exiled from Sicily to Bloomsbury with his volatile wife, an owl and a

brood of rickets-stricken chickens; he passed the time by reproducing the

paintings of the Sistine Chapel on his ceiling. Lewis’s relationship with

his parents-in-law survived a moment of paralysing embarrassment when, on

the Corvajas’ first visit to Enfield, his father [Lewis’s parents were

spiritualists] slipped into a trance during Sunday lunch and began to

communicate with the spirit of Ernestina’s dead sister. The effort of will

needed to absorb calmly such experiences was perhaps the wellspring of

Lewis’s cool, detached prose.”