On the cover of this thoroughly readable, quasi-celebrity memoir is a picture of its author as a baby, sitting at the feet of her garishly dressed father. It’s a sign of what’s to come for young Tracy Tynan, daughter of Kenneth Tynan (1927-80), the most dashingly brilliant theatre critic of the postwar period. The great man sits on his sofa, fag in hand, bashing out some copy on his typewriter as if his daughter were not there. By page 3 of the book we discover that Tracy’s mother, the writer Elaine Dundy, had a pair of faux leopard-skin trousers that matched her husband’s.
Tynan and Dundy could also match each other for flamboyance, for sexual appetite, for devotion to the literary high life. The way
