A Gap in the Market

When Jeremy Macdonogh left the ivory towers of Cambridge University in 1970, the United Kingdom was on the brink of melt-down. His degree in History and Philosophy was utterly unsalable in the real world. Few graduates would land a salary unless their degrees were in some banausic discipline, like Medicine or Law. The author, in consequence, 'wasted' a few years in Europe, the story of which he has told in A Gap Year or Two. In the process, however, he acquired fluent French and Italian. Back then the City of London was a very different place to the high-rise cluster of international banks, insurance companies and commodity dealers that it is today. It was more of a compendium of cottage industries. The banks were smaller, more agile, more plentiful. Computers, now so universal, scarcely existed. The business was largely unregulated and was consequently more volatile. This amusing, closely observed and intelligent memoire, A Gap in the Market, relates the vicissitudes of his early career, one in which he traipses across the south of Europe, supposedly developing business for his employer. A generous expense account provides this foot loose and fancy free young man with his epicurean delights while his exposure to Italian Communists, Spanish Falangists, Yugoslavian Stalinists, and Greek Capitalists feeds a thirsty imagination. His stageplay, Flight of Fancy, written at this time, enjoyed a short season on the London stage.