Review
--Independent
The Scotsman
Times Literary Supplement
Time Out London
New Statesman
Product Description
When Robert Purcell, aged eight, read his father's entry in Who's Who, he saw his own life unfolding before him. Like his father, he'd get a first in Law, then enjoy a distinguished career as a barrister and a judge. For a long time, everything went to plan. Then his life fell apart. He committed a crime. He went to prison.
Now he's out, his wife has told him to write an account of who he is and why he is who he is. What drove him to his crime? To an English gentleman who loathes the confessional culture such emotional striptease is torture. Nevertheless, A Short Gentleman is that confession. An intellectual giant but an emotional pygmy, Robert struggles to come to terms with the forces that brought him down: Elizabeth, the wife who wanted him to change, Judy Page, the ex-girlfriend who came back to haunt him, Pilkington, the childhood bully who grew into an adult bully, Mike Bell, the old friend Robert was always happy to patronise. Finally, there's his father, who proved, at the end of his life, not to be the man Robert thought he was.
Despite everything, Robert remains heroically determined to carry on being the same magnificently pompous and self-righteous man he always was, utterly resistant to therapy, change and the emotional demands of the opposite sex.
From the Back Cover
'Elegantly written, civilised and genuinely funny; there are smiles on almost every page... There is both humour and wit in the writing' Scotsman
Robert Purcell knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life from the moment he read his father's entry in Who's Who. He too would get a First in Law, enjoy a distinguished career as a barrister and a judge and marry well. At first, all seems to go to plan - so how did this perfect specimen of the British Establishment end up in prison?
An intellectual giant but an emotional pygmy, Robert is a man struggling to come to terms with the forces that have brought him down from the wife who wanted him to change to the ex-girlfriend who came back to haunt him and the childhood bully who turned into an adult bully. Despite everything, Robert remains determined to carry on being the same magnificently self-righteous man he always was, utterly resistant to therapy, change and the emotional demands of the opposite sex.
'This is light reading but deceptively so, offering deliciously well observed vignettes of the top legal set' Time Out
'Brilliantly witty' Arabella Weir
