The Island Pharisees - John Galsworthy

 Galsworthy is best known for his Forsyte Saga.   It is often forgotten that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was also a very successful, sometimes controversial dramatist.   The Island Pharisees is a novel from 1904, two years before The Man of Property began the saga.   It is a gentle satire of middle class Edwardian English pride and hypocrisy.   Dick Shelton, a half-hearted, well-off trainee barrister, has become engaged to the beautiful daughter of wealthy landowner Algernon Dennant.   Her mother comes from the aristocracy and Antonia is regarded as a fine catch.

Antonia's parents insist on a period of separation, to make sure the young people really love each other.   During this time Dick knocks about town country, visiting old friends and society contacts.   His journey is dogged by a young French bohemian he meets in Chapter One.   Ferrand is something of an anarchist, on the tramp around Europe.   Dick casually gives him a few pounds to help out.   They keep meeting through the novel.   They correspond and Dick writes to Antonia about his odd acquaintance.   Ultimately, of course, they come together at Holm Oaks near Oxford, the family seat of the Dennants.   Ferrand does his level best to behave but ultimately he has to go.   Antonia recognises that something has changed in Dick since he fell under the influence of Ferrand.   He seems to question the norms of society...

It is beautifully done, Galsworthy showing the better qualities of his characters as well as the worst.   The broadest satire is reserved for the most pompous and opinionated - a bunch of Oxford dons at Shelton's old college.   I was particularly struck by the way the Dennant family are more tolerant of Ferrand, who is of course not one of them, than their neighbouring landowner who is shacked up with a married woman.   Many excellent writers do not win the Nobel Prize.   What makes an excellent writer into a great one, worthy of the Prize, is humanity, which Galsworthy dispenses here in spades. 

In the King's Name - Alexander Kent

The twenty-sixth and latest Bolitho novel, published last year.  Kent is really Douglas Reeman, also a best-selling author under his real name, and was born in 1924.  To be still writing at 87 is a remarkable achievement, but to have maintained the standard over so many novels in a sequence written over forty years is truly extraordinary.

The Bolitho here is Adam, formerly Pascoe, nephew and heir of Admiral Sir Richard, whose career we followed since To Glory We Steer back in 1968.  Richard is dead, killed in action, and it has to be said Adam is not quite the man his uncle was.  Then again, a different kind of captain is needed for the post-Napoleonic peace.  The enemy here are the blackbirders, outlawed slave-traders and the shadowy figures who finance them.

Always a tricky move for a series writer to switchto the next generation.  It's rarely entirely successful - Galsworthy couldn't manage it with The Forsyte Saga, and he won the Nobel Prize.  Kent certainly does better than the similarly aged Winston Graham with the later Poldarks.