Light Sleep: Life from McCarthy to COVID

When George Rousseau was eleven years old playing a Haydn piano sonata at his teacher's annual house concert a member of the audience jumped up and exclaimed: 'with what amazing confidence the little boy plays.' The confidence never abandoned George for very long, even if he continued to ponder, as he explains in Light Sleep, its sources.

With uncanny candour and self-critical abandon, he writes about the passions that have driven his life, ranging from the piano and scribbling to a maniacal desire to couple up with another person and the need for intimate friendships. He writes bravely about the challenges of combining several careers - in music and academia - and toiling in diverse fields - historical, literary, medical - to forge a credible profile in the modern research university.

George surveys his origins as a poor Sephardic Jewish boy growing up gay in immigrant Brooklyn after the War; his love affair with America's Ivy League universities where he studied and taught; his wrenching move from America's East Coast to West Coast, and then from Los Angeles - 'the love affair you never forget' - to Britain; and the human love affair of his life with a Welshman with whom he could share his most enduring passions: reading, gardening, and cultivating friendships. Small wonder he titles his story 'light sleep', suggesting the attention required and the distraction deep sleep might cause, as well as the ambiguities and hurdles of such an unconventional life.