RETRO
THE SECRET COUNTESS by Eva Ibbotson (Macmillan £7.99, 368 pp)
THE SECRET COUNTESS
by Eva Ibbotson (Macmillan £7.99, 368 pp)
Anna, a young Russian countess, flees the revolution with her family — canny Granny first having fed her dachshund with a priceless diamond in a slice of liver sausage.
Now penniless (until the costive dog performs), they lodge with an old nanny in a poky London flat. Anna finds work as a skivvy at a stately home, cleaning the dilapidated pile before the Earl’s marriage to a ruthless, hard-hearted blonde beauty. Anna, exhausted after days of polishing bannisters and waxing floors, cools off in the moat wearing nothing but her long hair, unaware the moody Earl is lurking in the moonlight. No guessing! Sheer bliss from start to finish.
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A QUESTION OF UPBRINGING
A QUESTION OF UPBRINGING by Anthony Powell (Arrow £8.99, 272 pp)
by Anthony Powell (Arrow £8.99, 272 pp)
Oh no, not another toff take on prep school tribulations! This was my first reaction to Powell’s first instalment of his 12-volume portrait of 20th-century society, opening in the 1920s.
However, I was soon gripped by his exquisite grammar, fluency, punctuation, vocabulary and obscure classical references, and I warmed to narrator Jenkins’s amusing reportage and ponderings. Of course, there’s the ubiquitous school pong of carbolic, gravy and feet; the sneering and snobbery; ragging home visits to parents with butlers, servants and house-guests called Buster and Tuffy; and toffs in peals of laughter at cruel japes involving chamber pots — all mercilessly mocked by a scalpel-like pen.
In fact, I’m bowled over, hooked and, hurrah, there are 11 more volumes to go as Jenkins grows up. Terrific.
THE SANDCASTLE
THE SANDCASTLE by Iris Murdoch (Vintage £9.99, 368 pp)
by Iris Murdoch (Vintage £9.99, 368 pp)
Beware the addictive adrenaline buzz of illicit affairs! Murdoch skilfully evokes the agonies and the ecstacies of a disastrous fling occuring at a boys’ private school in a ‘God-forsaken backwater’.
Henpecked by his bossy wife, conventional schoolmaster Mor meets a bewitching young artist, Rain, and ping go the strings of his middle-aged heart.
Lust abundant! Furtive woodland love trysts go wrong, misunderstandings abound, the loyal wife heads towards breakdown, and lives are permanently ruptured by the ripple effects of betrayal, deception and shattered trust.
But is Rain as childlike and innocent as she appears? Will the star-crossed lovers ever consummate their steamy passion? Ah, there’s the rub...
An absolutely scintillating, slightly bizarre, page-turner.
