11 FEBRUARY 1978, page 21

Vicarious Fame

Benny Green Gilbert Cannan: A Georgian Prodigy Diana Farr (Chatto and Windus £8.50)......

In Become A Footnote To Other Men's Lives Is A

common enough literary fate; to become a footnote to your own is an irony so crushing that the egocentric Gilbert Cannan, had he foreseen his destiny, would surely have found it......