Moab Is My Washpot
Moab Is My Washpot (published 1997) is Stephen Fry’s humorous autobiography, covering the first 20 years of his life.
In the book, Fry is candid about his many weaknesses, including stealing, cheating and lying. The book covers some of the same ground as in Fry’s first novel, The Liar, published in 1991. In that work, public schoolboy Adrian Healey falls in love with a beautiful young boy called Hugo Cartwright; in the autobiography, 14-year-old Fry becomes besotted with 13-year-old "Matthew Osborne".
Fry also writes about his older brother Roger, Bunce (the innocent new boy at his prep school, Stouts Hill), Jo Wood (his best friend at Uppingham), and Oliver Derwent (a prefect who "seduces" Fry).
Title
The title, never explained in the text of the book, is a verse found in Psalm 60 and Psalm 108 (the latter being mainly a compilation of material from Psalms 57 and 60 but with a much more optimistic tone than either of those two). Jews in ancient times were extremely concerned with cleanliness. While wearing sandals in the dusty desert environment, their feet would become filthy, and upon entering a home they would be washed with water. They would not put their feet into the bowl, but instead hold their feet over the bowl and pour clean water over them, and the bowl would be used to catch the water.
Moab, which had threatened Israel, was to be so completely subdued, and so became likened to a wash pot or basin.[1]
Matthew Osborne
In an interview with the Evening Standard, Fry relates that he was reunited with "Osborne" after the publication of the book:[2]
- "I ask if the pseudonymous Matthew, with whom he eventually achieved some form of splendour in the long grass, had been in touch since the book came out in 1997. He had. How did he take it? 'Very well. He is very happily married with children. A wonderful chap and hugely successful as it happens,' Fry chuckles, incredulous. 'I think his wife knows because she is extremely friendly to me in a way that suggests to me she knows all about it and is very happy with it. I see him a couple of times a year, I suppose.'"