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Product Description
Product Description
This collection of short stories featuring 'Berry' Pleydell and his chaotic entourage established Dornford Yates' reputation as one of the best comic writers in a generation, and made him hugely popular. The German caricatures in the book carried such a sting that when France was invaded in 1939 Yates, who was living near the Pyren¿es, was put on the wanted list and had to flee.
About the Author
Born Cecil William Mercer into a middle class Victorian family with many Victorian skeletons in the closet, including the conviction for embezzlement from a law firm and subsequent suicide of his great-uncle, Yates' parents somehow scraped together enough money to send him to Harrow. The son of a solicitor, he qualified as a barrister whilst still finding timeto contribute stories to the Windsor Magazine. After the first world war hegave up legal work in favour of writing, which had become his great passion, and completed somethirty books. These rangedfrom light- hearted farce to adventure thrillers. For the former, he created the 'Berry' books which established Yates' reputation as a writer of witty, upper-crust romances. For the latter, he created ther character Richard Chandos, who recounts the adventures of Jonah Mansel, a classic gentleman sleuth. As a consequence of his education and experience, Yates' books feature the genteel life, a nostalgic glimpse at Edwardian decadence and a number of swindling solicitors. In his hey day, and as testament to hisfine writing, Dornford Yates' work was placed in the bestseller list. Indeed, 'Berry' is one of the great comic creations of twentieth century fiction; the 'Chandos' titles also beingsuccessfully adapted for television. Along with Sapper and John Buchan, Yates dominated the adventure book market of the inter war years. Finding the English climate utterly unbearable, Yates chose to live in the French Pyrenees for eighteen years, before moving on to Rhodesia where he died in 1960. 'Mr Yates can be recommended to anyone who thinks the British take themselves too seriously.' - Punch 'We appreciate fine writing when we come across it, and a wit that is ageless united to a courtesy that is extinct'-Cyril Connolly
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
It is years since I read Dornford Yates -I have most of his books in hardcopy but they are packed away in the loft as we don't have space for them. I was delighted to find this Kindle edition (the only one of the Berry books) and equally delighted to reread it. It is a peek into an age gone by, and although it may betray the author's bias, it has none of the sex and violence of today's novels that I find rather tedious. All of the villains are of the lower classes I grant you, and all of the women of the upper class are beautiful, I grant that too, but it is gently amusing and most of the books of that era are written in a similar vein - Marjorie Allingham (also not found on Kindle), Edgar Wallace, John Buchan, Arthur Conan Doyle etc. It is however not exactly restrained as Berry has a complete sense of the ludicrous that I find highly engaging. I love the prose, the use of language that just isn't found today. It made me laugh out loud, once again, in a couple of places, the scenes were pictured so exactly that I could almost see them. It isn't his best, but it is a delight and I am so glad to have revisited the book after many years. I just wish there were more Kindle editions to buy ...
6 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
An anachronism to some extent even when it first appeared in the earlier part of the twentieth century, this and the other "Berry" books are short stories of the Pleydell family -- intermarried cousins who live their upper-class existence at White Ladies in Hampshire with plenty of money and none of the inconveniences of children. In these idyllic surroundings, they can exchange witticisms, serve on the local Bench, and deplore the slow decline of England towards equality of opportunity and social democracy.
Berry can be funny, if you can handle Yates's fixation on bodily functions; Jonah is a domesticated version of the swashbuckling Mansel of Yates's romances; and "Boy" (the "author") alternates between a substitute for Berry and a hopeless romantic entranced by the occasional sight of a pretty girl's ankle. This is a nostalgic treatment of the days when all foreigners were funny, all Germans were beastly, and servants were in good supply and knew their place. As a footnote on history, it's of mild interest; as a significant work of literature that deserves this republishing in a new century, it scores very low.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Post WWI Neverland
6 April 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I don't understand myself. These stories, mostly of high jinks in the English countryside, are grossly overwritten, especially in descriptions of scenery. The protagonists are all perfect gentlemen, apart from their assumption of entitlement and chauvinist superiority, while the ladies are paragons of demure pulchritude. And yet I find them quite delightful in their depiction of a place and time that never was. It's a puzzlement.
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