BOOK 3
Two bites of the apple

(National service and a Parisian interlude)


Chapter 1: Basic army training
1.1: Career: enlistment in the Brigade of Guards
1.2: Parents & siblings: a new distance

1.3: Sex: looking for the first nibble

Chapter 2: Combermere barracks
2.1: Authority: my failures as a subaltern
2.2: Sex: an urgency to lose my virginity
2.3: Identity & activities: hesitant individualism
2.4: Parents: sparring skirmishes

Chapter 3: Wolfenbuttel barracks
3.1: Authority: triumphing through adversity
3.2: Activities: nursing the creative flame
3.3: Sex: establishing my heterosexual repute
3.4: Worship: agnosticism
3.5: Parents & siblings: rumours of pending divorce

Chapter 4: Final triumphs
4.1: Authority: on the turn of the tide
4.2: Activities: my first completed novel
4.3: Sex: in quest for love
4.4: Parents & siblings: the parental rift

Chapter 5: Savouring Paris
5.1: Career: cutting my teeth as an art student
5.2: Identity: discerning my Englishness
5.3: Parents & siblings: the divorce
5.4: Sex: Paris in the springtime

Chapter 6: Coronation time
6.1: Career: defining my future
6.2: Sex: fidelity in question
6.3: Identity: posing under the hat of genius
6.4: Parents: a fresh start