No laughing matter
Angus Wilson (Author), Secker & Warburg (Publisher)
"The story starts when we meet the Matthews family at the Wild West Exhibition in West Kensington in 1912 and ends with the family scattered and somewhat strangers to each other. Over sixty years of English are contained in this gigantic panorama, for Angus Wilson has gone in his own individual way in search of time lost, the alleged golden age of Edwardian England, followed by the Great War, the hectic twenties, the anxious thirties, the Second War and its bitter aftermath ... Father and mother, known to the children as Billy Pop and the Countess, are a sad come-down from the strong characters of grandmother and great-aunt, though they carry with them still the outer shell of a high civilisation ... But the full force of the author's talents are spent on the six children- Quentin, the ardent womanising socialist whose faith turns in success to cynicism. Gladys, plump and comfortable, who finds no husband till too late, but goes to prison for the sake of her elderly and dishonest lover. Rubert, who fulfills himself as an actor, rises to the top but fails to adapt to the changing needs of the theatre. Margaret, acid and brilliant novelist with a large public. Her twin, Sukey, wife and mother, cosy in her little world, who shades her eyes from the reality around her. Youngest of all, Marcus, man of taste, a picture-dealer, who ends up in control of a factory in North Africa"--Dust jacket flap
Print Book, English, 1967
Secker & Warburg, London, 1967