how can you not give this book five stars???(slowly shaking head)...the detail, the tension, the brilliant sardonic life view of my hero nick (did I mention the detail?)...i love this book and i love h f saint; WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU???...when i first read this book i spent the next few years scanning the book shop shelves under "s" looking for his next book but it never came...the radio interview on the net is wonderful, heartbreaking listening as you realise h f was still hopeful of continuing

how can you not give this book five stars???(slowly shaking head)...the detail, the tension, the brilliant sardonic life view of my hero nick (did I mention the detail?)...i love this book and i love h f saint; WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU???...when i first read this book i spent the next few years scanning the book shop shelves under "s" looking for his next book but it never came...the radio interview on the net is wonderful, heartbreaking listening as you realise h f was still hopeful of continuing his writing, and was in the process of writing another novel set in N Y...now he's in his 70's (or dead) and i've given up hope but i would love to know his life story post 1987, even more than nick's...i guess he just used up too many good ideas in the one masterpiece.

long live the king



(come on harry, let us know what happened to you)



footnote:-my first book was a paperback with chevy chase on the cover. I think this coloured the way I saw Nick. The last couple of times I read it in the hard cover version, and I think it felt a bit different. I recommend you cover up chevy's face if you have that edition, so that Nick is allowed to be himself. I wouldn't worry about covering up Darryl Hannah though, she IS Alice.



Update on Harry F Saint, March 13th, 2016.



Okay, every now and then I have a little search on the internet to see if anything has turned up on Harry F. Tonight I stumbled across one seemingly insignificant fact that lead to another then another; so that now I have a bit of a picture of Harry's life before and after MOAIM with details that haven't been linked publicly before; so here goes...



Born Feb 13 1941 in New York to Ellis Saint and Rachel Freeman. Full name Harry Freeman Saint. Ellis died in 1963, Rachel lived to 100 and died in 2007. She was living with her other son Chandler (Harry's brother) at the time at 47 North Street, Litchfield CT. Chandler is also a published author of "Making Freedom". It seems at some time Harry might have lived just down the road at 41 North St.



After graduating from Haverford College (at the time an all boys school) he studied Philosophy in Munich in Germany. He returned to America in 1963 when his father died to help run the family business and began a career in real estate development in Pennsylvania and New York. He became involved in developing and running squash courts, and is crediting with revolutionising the sport in New York at the time. He could see that squash might be the next big thing and created St. John Squash Racket Inc in 1973, raising $300,000 from private investors, including his wife's wealthy European family. Squash did enter a boom period, and Harry's company became a key backer of the sport. They expanded rapidly, but in doing so his wife's family became the major shareholders in the company. By the late seventies the squash boom was waning, and the company started moving into running gymnasiums. By 1981 Harry was finding it difficult to run a company that was mainly owned by his ex-wife's family (divorced in 1977, see below), so he cashed in his share and pursued his long held desire to write a book. Just by the way, that original company started by Harry eventually became Town Sports International, a large chain of over 120 health and fitness clubs with sales of $225 million by the year 2000.



So with the sale of his share in the business, Harry set about writing his book. On the basis of a couple of chapters he obtained a $5000 advance which forced him to write the whole of MOAIM. Even before publication he had accrued over $3 million in film, book club and paperback rights. Strikes me as ironic that the bulk of this early money came from the film rights for a film that was ultimately pretty dull. After the success of this book he worked for a time on another one based in New York, but could never quite get it going.



Harry was married in 1963 to Dona Gerarda de Orleans-Bourbon y Perodi Delfino, who was the eldest daughter of Infante Alvero, Duke of Galliera, Prince of the Royal House of France, etc etc. They had two children, Carla in 1967, and Marc in 1969. They divorced in 1977. Carla married Steven Lilly of Chicago in Riverdale, New York in 1992, divorced in 2001, no children. Remarried in Seville, Spain in 2001 and had three children in Seville. Marc married Dorothy Horps in USA in a civil ceremony in 1990, and followed up with a religious ceremony in Murs, France in 1991; divorced in 1995, no children. Remarried in 2009 in Seville, no children. Had one child prior to marriages in 1990 named Christopher Saint-Campogna. Interestingly both Carla and Marc's second marriages in Seville were to people with the same surname, "fernandez de cordoba". Brother/sister or cousins maybe?



At some stage before or during writing the book Harry married Nancy Gengler who, unsurprisingly given Harry's business involvement with squash courts, was a professional squash player. Her sister Louise was the head tennis coach at Princeton for a record 25 years. Nancy, a "tall, willowy redhead", appears to have been about 19 years younger than Harry. I think they probably married about 1983/4, since Nancy didn't graduate from Princeton until 1980 and was still known by the name Gengler in 1983, when she was runner up in the US national championship. They had two children, Lily and Alexander. There is a Lily Saint who is an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University in Connecticut who looks the right age to be Harry's Lily, but I have no evidence of a link other than the name and the location of the school in Connecticut. Oh, and also Harry's brother Chandler's book was published by Wesleyan University Press. If this is the same Lily she married independent journalist David Freelander in about 2014 and they have two children.



It seems likely that the Saints moved to the south of France around about 1990; probably to Murs which is a very pretty town on a hill in Provence, near Avignon. Harry was close to 50 by then, and would seem to be wealthy enough to have no need for employment. In my imagination he spent the following years raising his two younger children and managing his investments. Maybe still dabbling with writing. The other two children, by then in their twenties, seem to have developed a relationship with Seville in Spain, as both Carla and Mark were married there. Not sure if Harry and Nancy moved there as well. Harry's first wife had at least one relative living there, so maybe that is where she was living, which could explain the two children moving there.



Since at least 2002, and possibly some years earlier, Harry and Nancy have lived in Earls Court in London, within a stones throw of Queen's Club. I imagine given their backgrounds they might be keen royal tennis players. As of last year it appears they were both still alive and well at that location. As late as 2006 Harry was quoted as saying he had a couple of writing projects he was working on, but as yet nothing has appeared.



Quick update, November 2017



Harry and Nancy still appear to be living at the same place, which they actually bought in 1995. Lovely location...picture the final scene in Notting Hill.



Still holding onto that hope that we'll see another H F Saint on the bookshelves!



Further update, April 1, 2020 (not an April fools day joke)



With the sad news of the passing of Princess Maria Teresa of Spain at age 86, the first Royal to die from Covid19 infection, and a successful and meritorious person in her own right, I have dug a little deeper into the ancestry of Harry Saint's first wife. The reason is that Princess Maria Teresa was a member of the Bourbon-Parma Royal Family in Spain, a "morganatic", or "illegitimate" branch of the Bourbon dynasty which reached its peak with the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, the longest reigning and most powerful king in French history. Harry's first wife, Dona Gerarda, was of Bourbon lineage through the House of Orleans, so I hoped to establish a link somewhere along the line. That proved difficult, however I did find that Dona Gerarda is actually a great, great grand-daughter of Queen Victoria, as shown in the potted histories below.



1 Queen Victoria's second son was Prince Alfred (1844-1900). Until his 20th year when his elder brother had his first son he was second in line to the throne. Whilst in the navy he travelled widely, including to Australia (indulge me here, I am Australian) where he was the first royal to visit the country. He was here for five months, and survived an assassination attempt in Sydney where he was shot in the back at close quarters. His would be assassin was hanged six weeks later. Alfred survived largely due to the care of six nurses trained by Florence Nightingale and only recently arrived in the colony. There are a number of major buildings in Australia named after him including Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, which was granted use of the term "Royal" by Queen Victoria herself. He eventually married Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia, and an English bakery made the now famous Marie biscuit to commemorate the occasion. Their fifth child was Princess Beatrice of Edinburgh.

2. Princess Beatrice (1884-1966) led an eventful life, including being a bridesmaid at the wedding of the future King George V and Queen Mary when she was nine. After being refused permission to marry her cousin Grand Duke Michael, brother of Tsar Nicholas II, she met Alfonso de Orleans y Bourbon (1886-1975), a cousin of King Alfonso XIII of Spain at the king's wedding. They married three years later in 1909 at Coburg in Germany, and were to enjoy a long marriage through tumultuous times which included exile, imprisonment, and the loss of a son and their estate during the Spanish Civil War. Alfonso trained as a pilot in 1910, went on to a long career in aviation and the military, and is considered one of the most distinguished aviators in Spanish history. Their first child, Alvaro, was born in Coburg in 1910.

3. Alvaro de Orleans, 6th Duke of Galliera (1910-1997) was educated at Winchester College in England whilst his family was in exile from Spain. They eventually returned to Spain but at some stage Alvaro moved to Italy and married Carla Parodi-Delfino (1909-2000) in Rome in 1937. Their first child was Dona Gerarda (1939-present) who would become Harry Freeman Saint's first wife, and mother of his two eldest children. Succession rules decree that the title pass onto the eldest son. Since he (Alonso, second child of Alvaro) died in 1975, before the death of Alvaro, the title has passed to Alonso's son Alfonso who is now the 7th Duke of Galliera. So unfortunately Harry and Dona's son Marc has missed out on this title and its subsequent benefits.



Queen Victoria>Prince Alfred>Princess Beatrice>Alvaro de Orleans>Dona Gerarda m Harry F Saint in 1963. Which made Harry a great, great grandson-in-law of Queen Victoria, as well as a great writer.



I had hoped to visit Harry in London with my h/c copy of Memoirs of an Invisible Man and ask him to sign it this year. Unfortunately the Covid19 that ended the life of Princess Maria Teresa has put paid to this trip. Hopefully I can try again next year when Harry will be 80. My wife thinks I'm mad and will end up in gaol for stalking, but if Harry's worried at all he is being given a year's notice and has plenty of time to relocate to a brownstone in New York somewhere.



To be continued...