- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (26 Oct 1972)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 014003482X
- ISBN-13: 978-0140034820
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 10.8 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 760,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The last in the Strangers and Brothers series has Sir Lewis Eliot's heart stop briefly during an operation. During recovery he passes judgement on his achievements and dreams. Concerns fall from him leaving only ironic tolerance. His son Charles takes up his father's burdens and like his father, he is involved in the struggles of class and wealth, but he challenges the Establishment, risking his future in political activities.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
C.P. Snow was born in Leicester, on 15 October 1905. He was educated from age 11 at Alderman Newton's School for boys where he excelled in most subjects, enjoying a reputation for an astounding memory. In 1923 he gained an external scholarship in science at London University, whilst working as a laboratory assistant at Newton's to gain the necessary practical experience, because Leicester University, as it was to become, had no chemistry or physics departments at that time. Having achieved a first class degree, followed by a Master of Science he won a studentship in 1928 which he used to research at the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Snow went on to become a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1930 where he also served as a tutor, but his position became increasingly titular as he branched into other areas of activity. In 1934, he began to publish scientific articles in Nature, and then The Spectator before becoming editor of the journal Discovery in 1937. However, he was also writing fiction during this period and in 1940 'Strangers and Brothers' was published. This was the first of eleven novels in the series and was later renamed 'George Passant' when 'Strangers and Brothers' was used to denote the series itself. Discovery became a casualty of the war, closing in 1940. However, by this time Snow was already involved with the Royal Society, who had organised a group to specifically use British scientific talent operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. He served as the Ministry's technical director from 1940 to 1944. After the war, Snow became a civil service commissioner responsible for recruiting scientists to work for the government. He also returned to writing, continuing the Strangers and Brothers series of novels. 'The Light and the Dark' was published in 1947, followed by 'Time of Hope' in 1949, and perhaps the most famous and popular of them all, 'The Masters', in 1951. He planned to finish the cycle within five years, but the final novel 'Last Things' wasn't published until 1970. He married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950 and they had one son, Philip, in 1952. Snow was knighted in 1957 and became a life peer in 1964, taking the title Baron Snow of the City Leicester. He also joined Harold Wilson's first government as Parliamentary Secretary to the new Minister of Technology. When the department ceased to exist in 1966 he became a vociferous back-bencher in the House of Lords. After finishing th
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I read "Last Things" over the course of a two week holiday. I had, in fact, been meaning to read it for months beforehand.
One of the things I liked was the dramaticism of the (numerous) dinner parties, where awkward social situations are dryly described. I also liked the complexity of the relationships between the characters. Snow's abounding love of depth when describing anything (at all) was interesting and illuminating, but the book lacks general narrative movement as a result. The narrative does not profit proportionally from this Wagnerian-style detail and complexity, for example through the use of recurring ideas, themes or pathetic fallacies etc. In short, the detail is often disapointingly superfluous to the progression of the book as a whole. I disliked the total length of the novel, which, is at times simply long-winded. Why, for example, does Eliot on at least two occassions say words to the effect of, "I knew, and he/she knew that I knew that I felt ... etc. etc."? Either the depth of Snow's writing has done it's work and we KNOW how the characters are feeling, or he leaves the matter open. I don't need to be spoon-fed. I would have liked Eliot (the narrator) to be more humourous, more self-critical, and perhaps less faithful to the establishment. As a description of the society of the time, the book is terribly lop-sided, with the main focus on the Oxbridge academics, the super-rich and priveleged (embodied by Muriel). The numerous chances to gain social balance through Diana (token working class woman) are never taken.
In total, a little disappointing.
One of the things I liked was the dramaticism of the (numerous) dinner parties, where awkward social situations are dryly described. I also liked the complexity of the relationships between the characters. Snow's abounding love of depth when describing anything (at all) was interesting and illuminating, but the book lacks general narrative movement as a result. The narrative does not profit proportionally from this Wagnerian-style detail and complexity, for example through the use of recurring ideas, themes or pathetic fallacies etc. In short, the detail is often disapointingly superfluous to the progression of the book as a whole. I disliked the total length of the novel, which, is at times simply long-winded. Why, for example, does Eliot on at least two occassions say words to the effect of, "I knew, and he/she knew that I knew that I felt ... etc. etc."? Either the depth of Snow's writing has done it's work and we KNOW how the characters are feeling, or he leaves the matter open. I don't need to be spoon-fed. I would have liked Eliot (the narrator) to be more humourous, more self-critical, and perhaps less faithful to the establishment. As a description of the society of the time, the book is terribly lop-sided, with the main focus on the Oxbridge academics, the super-rich and priveleged (embodied by Muriel). The numerous chances to gain social balance through Diana (token working class woman) are never taken.
In total, a little disappointing.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the last book in the 11-volume series comprising the "Strangers and Brothers" sequence, written in the form of the memoirs of the narrator, Lewis Eliot.
The best parts of this book are either those which follow the main thrust of the early plot - will Lewis Eliot, now Sir Lewis, accept a peerage and join the government? - and those where he revisits old haunts (i.e. Cambridge) and now-elderly friends and colleagues. Unfortunately, a excess of not-very-interesting subplots come to dominate, and what should have been a crisp 150-200 page ending of a fine series becomes rather shapeless 300 pages. But if you've read the earlier books, its still worth reading.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
no title
28 April 2006
Format:Paperback
The last one - 11 books - took me seven months to read them all, and now I feel berift, like something has left my life. An amazing accomplishment by Snow which started in 1940 and was completed with this novel, published in 1970. The span of a man's life is covered, Lewis Eliot, I greatly suspect Snow's alter ego, and in this last one, he is threatened with death, a dear friend in fact does die, a step-son marries and has a child, and Eliot's own son goes off to make his own fate. George Passant dies alone, life goes on. A good wrapping up of things. I will remember the heart of the series, which is that a human's actions are part his own nature, part the times in which he lives. This series should be remembered better. Eliot is about 62 when the novel ends.
Families
18 Oct 2008
Format:Hardcover
Lewis Eliot's wife's name is Margaret. Her father, Austin Davidson, attempts suicide. Margaret sees this as a kind of breach of trust. Margaret and Lewis visit Hector Rose, a former civil servant now retired. He has remarried and his new wife is young. Lewis's nephew Pat claims he wants to name his new baby after Margaret. (The child turns out to be a son.) Pat's wife Muriel makes her own decision about naming the baby. Following the baby's birth, Muriel arranges a separation from Pat.
When Lewis's son Charles, age seventeen, returns from a trip abroad he says he is struck by how inward Britain has become. After his wife turns him out, Pat visits the dying Austin Davidson. Trying to decide whether to take a government job, Lewis encounters Sammikins, who is gaunt-faced, (inoperable cancer). He decides not to take the job. The novel is set in 1965, a time when British power and influence had diminished. Austin Davidson, a pre-1914 member of the group known as the Apostles believed that no good man got involved in politics. He was pleased with Lewis's decision.
Lewis has surgery for a slipped retina. He learns that while he was under anesthesia his heart had stopped. Francis Getliffe, a comrade and notable university scientist, feels that Lewis's experience should not have happened.
While speaking to one of Charles's friends, Lewis registers the fact that in 1965 people no longer try very hard to disguise their regional accents.
This is as strong a novel in the STRANGERS AND BROTHERS series as any of the others. As characters die and plot lines are tied up the reader feels things end naturally and reasonably. There seems to be no weakening of purpose on the part of the author, no slackness.
When Lewis's son Charles, age seventeen, returns from a trip abroad he says he is struck by how inward Britain has become. After his wife turns him out, Pat visits the dying Austin Davidson. Trying to decide whether to take a government job, Lewis encounters Sammikins, who is gaunt-faced, (inoperable cancer). He decides not to take the job. The novel is set in 1965, a time when British power and influence had diminished. Austin Davidson, a pre-1914 member of the group known as the Apostles believed that no good man got involved in politics. He was pleased with Lewis's decision.
Lewis has surgery for a slipped retina. He learns that while he was under anesthesia his heart had stopped. Francis Getliffe, a comrade and notable university scientist, feels that Lewis's experience should not have happened.
While speaking to one of Charles's friends, Lewis registers the fact that in 1965 people no longer try very hard to disguise their regional accents.
This is as strong a novel in the STRANGERS AND BROTHERS series as any of the others. As characters die and plot lines are tied up the reader feels things end naturally and reasonably. There seems to be no weakening of purpose on the part of the author, no slackness.
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