This is one of the books that made me love english litterature. It is so wonderfully absurd and at the same time accurate in it's description of british society and education around 1930. When I sometime tires of Wodehouse and the constant mix-ups of his (otherwise wonderful) tales about Jeeves & Wooster, Psmith or Blandings Castle, Waugh is my choice. It is down to earth, but extremely funny.
Young man Pennyfeather is expelled from Oxford due, through no fault of his own, to indecent behaviour. He becomes schoolmaster at a school in Wales which, frankly, is not very good. He falls in love, and the rest of the plot is for you to find out.
I can tell you, however, that in this book Waugh covers so diverse subjects as prisons, religion, education, architecture (at this point, one might rightly wonder if it's Bentham I'm reviewing instead of Waugh, but no!), glamour, greed, insanity, worldwide cooperation, Welsh music, teenage boys and alcohol. And even if you like or dislike some, or most of these things, Waugh makes them seem so absurd that you can't help but smile at his descriptions of everyday life in those very specific circles.
Go on and read it - it's cheap, it's a classic and it is one of the most entertaining and clever books I've ever read.
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