Saki, The Complete Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) [Paperback]

The stories of H.H.Munro - better known by his pen-name of Saki - have scarcely been out of print since they were first published around a hundred years ago. Yet it often seems that their particular delights are reserved for the private pleasures of his coterie of admirers.

It has to be admitted that a taste for Saki is something of an addiction. And, like all addictions, once acquired it is hard to give up. In the years since his tragic early death in the trenches of World War I at the hands of a German sniper, fellow addicts have included Graham Greene, Noel Coward and Tom Sharpe. All of us take a slightly wicked satisfaction from his biting wit and the subversive way in which he undermines the staid Edwardian society he purports to merely observe.

But, to a much greater extent than his near-contemporaries, Wilde and Kipling, there is something dark and menacing at the heart of Saki's writing. Behind the refined tinkle of teacups on an Edwardian lawn can be heard the distant howling of a wolf. Hidden among the shrubbery in a carefully manicured garden lurk all kinds of Beasts and Superbeasts, ready to wreak Nature's revenge on an uncaring mankind with its arrogant belief in materialism, progress and the innate respectability of middle-class values. Where Kipling's Jungle Book menagerie tends to simple analogies of human types, Saki's animals can rise up with the full power of Pan himself.

This is not to ignore Saki's ability to turn an aphorism with all the facility and wit of the divine Oscar at his best. Nor does it forget his ability to prick the inflated egos of louche young men with too much time and money on their hands or deliciously dotty aunts and duchesses with their minds firmly fixed on Empire and their Imperial responsibilities.

It would be easy to argue that Munro foresaw the imminent collapse of this society into the cataclysm of the Great War. With his experience as a political journalist in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, he was probably more aware than most of the storm that was about to break over Europe.

But essentially he was an observer of his fellow man. And it is for the humour of his observations, for the dazzling twists and turns his tales take and for the fact that he makes us laugh inordinately that he is to be treasured and why we addicts are prepared to share our secret vice with those who have yet to acquire the habit.

It is easy to understand why H.H.Munro, pen name Saki, is still regarded as one of the greatest writers of short stories. His elegant, ironic prose reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse with a sharp sting in the tale.

Although Saki mocked the snobbery and hypocrisy of upper class Edwardian England, he himself seems to have been limited by unexamined prejudice against the lower classes, women in general, and new social movements of his day like female suffrage and socialism.

Organised by date of collection, the tales show a clear progression. The early "Reginald" stories are remarkably short, often barely a page, very dated and a bit too precious in style for my taste. As the years pass, the stories gain in length and depth, culminating in works like "The Square Egg". This captures the muddiness of trench life in World War 1 - the streaming mud walls, the inches of soup-like mud at the entrance to the dug-out, the muddy biscuits eaten with mud-caked fingers. This story also shows Saki's talent for going off at an imaginative tangent, in this case based on a wily Frenchman's novel idea for using the idea of "square eggs" from specially bred hens to try to get some money out of the narrator.

I particularly enjoyed the stories which focus on real emotions and psychology which could be relevant to any age and society: "Peace Toys" in which an uncle tries to give his nephews toys which will discourage them from violent play; "Tobermory" which speculates on the practical disadvantages of having a cat which has learned to speak about all the compromising goings-on it has witnessed as it creeps around unnoticed; "The Lumber Room" in which a small boy takes advantage of a rare chance to have his revenge on a pious, bullying aunt - the many stories about children getting their own back on control-freak adults may stem from painful experiences in Saki's own motherless childhood. Then there is "The Story-teller" where a bachelor distracted by noisy children on a train ride subverts the normal rules about telling children only improving stories.

I have mixed feelings about Clovis, a favourite recurring character of Saki's, who acts as a mocking observer of the class to which he has been born, while sponging off it, and snobbishly maintaining many of its prejudices. Yet "Clovis on Parental Responsibilities" is amusing where, in a Pinterish talking at cross purposes with a Mrs Eggelby, bored by her endless prattle about her children's accomplishments, Clovis undermines all the accepted views on bringing up children.

I would have liked a brief introduction on Saki's life. It seems important to know that, enrolling as an ordinary private soldier when in his forties, he was killed by a sniper's bullet after vainly asking a colleague to put out the cigarette which was emitting a tell-tale trail of smoke.

H.H. Munro, 'Saki', is my desert island book, brilliant, funny, witty, frighening. The best short stories in the English language, in my opinion. P.G. Wodehouse with venom.