Wolf Mankowitz, British novelist, screenwriter, playwright, producer, china and porcelain expert, journalist, humorist, and prolific dabbler in almost every form of written or staged enterprise, can be accurately described as an agile recycler of experience, a salvage dealer for sensation and for emotion. He is the quintessential literary huckster who can as readily set his pitch on the stage, the screen, or the television tube, as on the printed page.

He is, however, first and foremost a teller of tales, and prose fiction gives the appearance of being the bedrock of his writer's impulses. Though a superb visualizer, he seems rooted firmly in language, frequently authentic cockney. Despite the demands on his time of owning businesses ranging from The Pickwick Club, a successful London restaurant, to the second largest china business in London, he has won awards for his work in theater and in film, and he has...