The Times - UK (2022-05-28)

8 saturday review Saturday May 28 2022 | the times

Excellent Women Barbara Pym 1952
There’s probably no more perfect comedy
in the English language than this droll
little novel by the perennially under-read
Barbara Pym. It’s narrated by Mildred
Lathbury, a spinster who inhabits a post-
war England of boiled eggs and tins of
baked beans, of flower arranging and mak-
ing do, of quietly dashed hopes and gossip
about the vicar. As I say, perfect. CA

The Go-Between LP Hartley 1953
This dark and delicious tale of repressed
sexuality and class obsession is set mostly
in an optimistic 1900, but told from the
perspective of the war-ravaged 1950s.
Twelve-year-old Leo loses his innocence
over one long, hot summer in a stately
home. Picturesque cricket matches and
coy heiresses flitting about in lush gardens
hide a tragic, Freudian psychodrama. MK

The Fellowship of the Ring
JRR Tolkien 1954
After 100 pages, it is clear that Frodo’s
homeland, the Shire, is but a speck of dust
in Middle-earth’s vast cosmology. No writ-
er conveyed scale quite like Tolkien. And
yet our questing hero’s creator, an un-
worldly Oxford philologist, rated his other
myths, runes, verses, maps and assorted
folderol far above the epic tale that inad-
vertently invented a global genre. Well,
that’s readers for you. SI

The Inheritors William Golding
1955
There has never been a novel like
this, which makes the reader
“de-think” down to the level of
its Neanderthal characters, who
hunt and play while struggling to
understand what’s happening to
them. What’s happening is that
we, the Homo sapiens, are coming
to drive them to extinction. JS

The Last of the Wine Mary Renault
1956
In Athens, Alexias grows to manhood in
the shadow of war with Sparta. He falls in
love with Lysis, a fellow student of Soc-
rates, and they fight side by side for the
honour of their city. Mary Renault’s first
novel set in ancient Greece is ground-
breaking in its portrayal of homosexual
love, and is unsurpassably vivid in its de-
piction of ancient lives. AS

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

Elizabeth Taylor 1971

The blossoming friendship between a

newly arrived elderly resident at a hotel

and a dashing young writer whom she

passes off as her grandson is the unlikely

subject of Elizabeth Taylor’s delightfully

sharp-toothed bittersweet comedy. She

mines terrific entertainment from the foi-

bles of the washed-up poor souls eking out

their days at the Claremont Hotel. A minor

masterpiece. CA

The Day of the Jackal Frederick

Forsyth 1971

No publisher originally wanted Frederick

Forsyth’s thriller because it seemed to lack

the touchstone of suspense. The plot con-

cerns a bid by a nameless English assassin

to kill President Charles de Gaulle. Yet

Forsyth gives the writing authenticity with

a faux documentary style and riveting

inside knowledge about the underworld,

turning the old-school “whodunnit” into

the modern “howdunnit”. And they say

genre fiction can’t be art. JO

The Siege of Krishnapur JG Farrell 1973

This Booker-winning novel is set in a small

garrison town in India during the 1857

Indian Rebellion. The town’s British

inhabitants hold out for four months

against an army of native sepoys. As food

and water begin to run out, the British be-

come a little mad, watched over gleefully

by the locals. JG Farrell’s spiky, ironic voice

is perfect to satirise the absurdities of em-

pire, while retaining compassion for the

men and women who find themselves

besieged. AS

Concrete Island JG Ballard 1974

Wealthy architect Robert Maitland need

not have crashed his car, but he did — and

he’s ended up trapped on a traffic island

Rhys, in this prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s

novel, she’s also among the most over-

looked and least understood. Rhys allows

her to tell her own story and to reclaim her

Creole identity, turning fiction’s most

infamous bout of arson into an act of

justice. JO

Endless Night Agatha Christie 1967

Not a case for Hercule Poirot or Miss

Marple, but the creepy tale of a strange

romance and a gypsy’s curse. Shortly after

newlyweds Michael, a chauffeur, and

poor-little-rich-girl Ellie move into their

new home they find a dead bird on a skew-

er with the message: “Get out if you know

what’s good for you!” When they don’t, all

hell breaks loose. The queen of crime is at

her most cunning in this thriller. MS

Flashman George MacDonald Fraser

1969

Harry Flashman was by his own admission

“a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a cow-

ard and — oh yes, a toady”. But what a

man! What an exemplar of imperial ad-

venture! George MacDonald Fraser’s anti-

hero appeared in 12 novels, bonking (or

“humping the mutton”, as he’d put it) and

biffing his way through scrapes. In this, the

first, he accidentally becomes a hero for his

role in the 1842 retreat from Kabul. RM

Girl, 20 Kingsley Amis 1971

A hilarious howl of reactionary rage

against the philistine, tradition-smashing,

sex-mad 1960s. Sir Roy Vandervane is a

respected conductor trying to get down

with the kids by taking a teenage girlfriend

and collaborating with the rock band Pigs

Out. His Stradivarius is smashed, mar-

riages are broken, drugs are taken, the

sacred beauty of art is disrespected. The

world has gone mad and Kingsley Amis is

furious. At least he’s funny about it. JM

jubilee books

We crown these

books classics: our

favourite novels of

the past 70 years

For the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, our critics pick the best

novels of her reign from Britain and the Commonwealth

The Bell Iris Murdoch 1958

Iris Murdoch’s best book concerns roman-

tic adventure in a religious community

nestled on the outskirts of a great abbey.

The characters wrestle with faith and de-

sire and they do it with exquisite Murdoch-

ian seriousness (what would Plato do?).

And then there’s the mystery of the enor-

mous medieval bell resting at the bottom

of the lake. Pure pleasure. JM

Our Man in Havana Graham Greene

1958

They made me read The Power and the

Glory at school when I was 14 and I had

never been so bored. I gave up after 50

pages and swore never to read Greene

again. Then 30 years later, while camping

at my parents-in-law’s place, I found a

complete set of his hardbacks, plucked this

one — a satirical tale of a vacuum cleaner

retailer in Cuba recruited into British in-

telligence — and didn’t stop reading until

the sun came up. I read the whole shelf in

six weeks and, rather than curse my teen-

age self, thanked him for laying aside this

treasure for my middle age. GC

Jeeves in the Offing PG Wodehouse

1960

Jeeves first appeared in 1916, but the gentle-

man’s gentleman and his hapless chronicler

Bertie Wooster had elaborate scrapes well

into the Queen’s reign. This has all the fa-

vourites: a demanding aunt, star-

crossed lovers and an irate psychia-

trist called Sir Roderick Glossop

pretending to be a butler called

Swordfish. AS

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Muriel Spark 1961

Muriel Spark could do so much in

120 twinkling pages that you

search her novels for trapdoors.

This is set in a girls’ school in 1930s

Edinburgh, where the eccentric Miss

Brodie teaches her disciples things she

oughtn’t to. It’s smart and funny, but also

touching when the godlike narrator skips

ahead to the pupils’ futures — one becomes

“famous for sex” — and to the decline of

Miss Brodie, no longer in her prime. JS

Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966

The “mad woman in the attic”, Mr Roches-

ter’s first wife in Jane Eyre, is one of litera-

ture’s most notorious characters. For Jean

Our panel

of critics

Our 50 favourite

novels (by British, Irish,

and Commonwealth

writers from 1952-

2022) were chosen by

a panel of Times critics:

Claire Allfree, Giles

Coren, Laura Freeman,

Susie Goldsbrough,

Simon Ings, Melissa

Katsoulis, James

Marriott, James Owen,

Robbie Millen, Mark

Sanderson, Sathnam

Sanghera, John Self

and Antonia Senior.

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Jones’s Diary