Peter Mayne’s The Narrow Smile, reviewed by James Crowden
for the Royal Society of Asian Affairs
 
Peter Mayne (1908-1979) was a bit of a card, quick witted, suave and genteel. His English friends included Cyril Connolly, Ronald Searle, Francis Bacon and Osbert Lancaster. Just the sort of writer who gets himself deeply embedded by drinking gin and cider in London bohemian Society or drinking tea on the North West Frontier. Pathan and Hampstead codes of honourable behaviour have much in common. The greatest crime is to be boring… Peter had many friends not just in Pakistan. He spent many years in India, first in shipping in Bombay and then in Madras. His father had run a top notch college for Indian Princes - Rajmukar College down in Gujerat.

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