Hugo Vickers
TERENCE Stamp's latest memoirs, Dou- ble Feature (Bloomsbury, £14.95), is an evocative account of his tortured love affair with Jean Shrimpton. After a life of `scrumptious girls', shared with Michael Caine, Stamp converts the Shrimp into one of the romantic creatures of our time. The affair begins as he collects her at the airport, first walking 'a witch's circle' round his car to save it from traffic wardens, and ends with him, lying alone in bed with her pullover, inhaling 'the faint memory, imagining her astral body lying beside me'. It struck me as an honest story, but how would the Shrimp react? Would her line be: 'Oh come off it, Stamp?'
A more substantial heroine was wonder- fully portrayed in Hugo Young's One of Us (Macmillan, £16.95). An interesting point about this book is that, despite being published in April, John Major does not so much as rate a mention.
Finally, having landed Artemis Cooper with the seemingly impossible task of Cairo in the War (Hamish Hamilton, £16.95), I clearly had to read it. I still do not know how she handled it so masterfully. She has converted herself from being a writing grand-daughter into a good historian.
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