Brat Farrar

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We meet the single Aunt Bee (Beatrice) and most importantly her nephew Simon who is 20 with a coming-of-age party imminent, when he will inherit his mother’s fortune, especially their home Latchetts, which is a stud and an estate of three farms in the village of Clare in a high valley in the English countryside. Also at the table are his sisters, Eleanor, a year or so younger than Simon, and identical twins Ruth and Jane, nine-going-on-ten. Once upon a time, in deepest darkest 2012, I was fortunate enough to be a law student at the University of Edinburgh, at just about the time when people were starting to make the big noises about whether a referendum on Scottish independence would be feasible. There was a debate on between a member of the department, and quite an eminent constitutional lawyer of whom I have long been in an intellectual sort of awe, so I went along. No Smoking: As a consequence of the Setting Update, none of the characters smoke except George, who retains his Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe. Brat, who in the book carried an engraved cigarette case full of his preferred brand, explicitly states that he doesn't smoke and disapproves of the habit. (The only significant effect on the plot is that a different way is needed to introduce the information that was conveyed by the engraving on the cigarette case, and this is smoothly managed.) That is the basic introduction to this amazingly well written book. It is funny, moves along faster than a hospital bed on greased wheels down a long hallway (no, that didn’t happen), and it is crime solving with collaboration at its very best. And, there is a twist near the end that I did not see coming. Not even close. One very small quibble which I have with the story is that Inspector Grant is drawn into this investigation after examining a copy of a portrait of Richard III. He and others see many different things in the face of Richard. However it is a painting not a photograph. What is in the face was put there by a painter. It may or may not be true to the actual face. Richard himself may have demanded changes from what the artist first painted.

stop and quavered about romance, but George had defeated them. He was a tall, thin man with the face of a very intelligent and rather nice ape. Besides, as the society editor of theAnd although I certainly now no longer have the massive literary and historical crush on (to and for me sadly misunderstood and unjustly maligned) Richard III that I had in 1984 (when I was a lonely teenager and read The Daughter of Time for a high school English literature project) I still and nevertheless firmly believe and continue to agree with Josephine Tey and her literary creation Alan Grant that Henry VII actually had considerably more and obvious reasons for wanting the two princes in the tower removed, for needing them to be gone forever than Richard III did (as they in my opinion were much more of a potential obstacle and threat to the former’s path to the English throne than to the latter). For Edward, Richard and their sister Elizabeth had indeed been declared illegitimate by an act of parliament (and whether wrongfully or rightfully does not really all that much matter here). However, after their uncle Richard III's death in battle and the repeal of said very parliamentary act which had declared Edward IV's and Elizabeth Woodville's children illegitimate (and this indeed needed to happen for Henry Tudor to be able to legally wed Elizabeth of York), the two princes in the tower would of course then have been first and second in line to the English throne, and their claim to the British throne was always much stronger and considerably more solid than Henry Tudor's own claim ever was. And with the children of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville suddenly no longer illegitimate, young Edward would have of course been king, with his brother Richard his heir apparent (and no, NOT Henry Tudor).

A sort of mud colour. I was so happy this week because it was the first week this year that we hadn't needed sitting-room fires and I had no fires to do and no fireplaces to clean. But nothing—I repeat, nothing—will stop George from throwing his used matches into the fireplace. And as he takes fifteen matches to light one pipe——! The room swarms with waste-paper baskets and ash trays, but no, George must use the fireplace. He doesn't evenShe was silent for a little and then blurted out the thing that had been her private nightmare for years. In the Ashby family, mention is made of Cousin Walter, who was brought low by drink and died a pauper. Walter turns out to be Brat's father. I do not doubt the historical quality of the novel, but it has been extremely boring, to the point of boredom.

Then things start to get weird as he starts to fancy his supposed sister Eleanor (a delicious 20-year-old Dominique Barnes - whatever happened to her?) and his integrity and suspicions start to get the better of him. Riding herd for the Santa Clara. And the discovery that "ornery" horses were less ornery when ridden by the limey kid. Bee privately thought that this was a very good description, but wished that Ruth would not be quaint. Loding was silent for a moment. Then he said, reasonably: "Tell me, do you believe my story at all?"If you take the "players" in The War of the Roses, and place them in more modern times- one could almost compare them to The Mob fighting for control of their territory... Well, he might be too slow to break horses any more, but he would be no servant to oil. There were other ways of living with horseflesh.

In THE DAUGHTER OF TIME Inspector Alan Grant is laid up in the hospital with a broken leg, and ooooooooh so bored. His friend- Marta- sympathetic to his plight- brings him photographs of important figures throughout history and the mysteries surrounding them- long unsolved. Alan finds one face jumps out at him more than the rest...Nancy, watching her friend's face, proffered what she considered to be consolation. "They say, you know, that when you throw yourself from a high place you lose consciousness almost at once." Tampico and the smell of tallow. And the tally-man who had said: "You Englishman? You want shore job?" I have been thinking so often lately of Bill and Nora," Nancy said. "This would have been such a happy time for them." And better still, now that he looked at it, he liked England. He wanted to work with English horses in an English greenness on English turf. In the beginning I thought that the story was rather boring because you did not know that much about the characters that take place in the storyline, but after a while when I was getting to know more and more about them I just could not stop reading the book.