SOURCE: "Getting Dirty," in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 3, No. 104, June 8, 1990, p. 38.

In the review below, French cautiously admires Raine's critical abilities in Haydn and the Valve Trumpet.

In my local bookshop I recently saw Clive James's collection of literary essays, Snake Charmers in Texas, among the travel books. Craig Raine's eccentric title for his own essays [Haydn and the Valve Trumpet] will almost certainly guarantee them a place in the musicology section of most bookshops.

The title derives from an essay exploring Haydn's use of the valve trumpet, which was published in the Listener in 1972. The following week a letter was published pointing out that the valve trumpet had been invented nine years after Haydn's death.

Raine himself is at his most carnivorously enjoyable when catching other critics in the act. In response to the critic A. Alvarez's accusation that John Betjeman indulges in "the nostalgia of public...