- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (3 Jun 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140271279
- ISBN-13: 978-0140271270
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,050,722 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Sound of Trumpets (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
In Paradise Postponed and Titmuss Regained John Mortimer took some fairly hefty swipes at the Thatcherite Conservative governments and the way the Labour Party had let them get away with it. The fact that Labour is the government at this writing appears to have changed nothing and the final part of this post-war political trilogy launches a pretty good swipe at them as well. New Labour--or "conservatism with water" as the trilogy's most enduring character, Leslie Titmuss, calls them--are seen, like the appearance of identical high streets in every town, as just another example of the blanding of Britain. So enter Titmuss--now retired from the Thatcher cabinet and called Lord Titmuss, First Baron Skurfield--to shake things up. He plays a wonderful Mephistopheles to a proto-Blairite parliamentary candidate's Faust as the electors in the tranquil Rapstone Valley again become a microcosm of British public life. Champagne socialists seem to come out of it all rather well, (as, it must be said, do reactionary old brutes like Titmuss) and the real venom is again reserved for the insipid political clones and power junkies. All in all vintage Mortimer. --Nick Wroe
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
After the death of a Tory MP in dubious circumstances, New Labour arrives in the Rapstone Valley in the shape of Terry Flitton and his very PC wife, Kate. The seat is captured, but at the at the terrible price of collaboration with the old Thatcherite Lord Titmuss, still a force in the area.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As always another interesting storyline to complete this trilogy, well worth reading and at a modest price, not to be missed.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Talks about the origins of New Labour and spin before we became aware of the phenomenon. John Mortimer is a bit prophetic about present day politics with zero values, zero morals, and chancers in it for all they can take the public for.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
political compromise receives a predictable poke
25 May 1999
Format:Hardcover
I loved Paradise Postponed. Even the name Leslie Titmuss makes me smile. Leslie reappears here, but the attention focuses on a wimpy candidate whom it's hard to root for. All seemed a bit tired, even the humor.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
PUNGENCY AND PATHOS IN THIS SATIRE
6 May 2005
Format:Hardcover
If there is one bipartisan voice in the darkly comic The Sound of Trumpets, it is that of the author, John Mortimer. With ripostes at the ready, his barbs are egalitarian as he mercilessly skewers both Labourites and Tories in this highly entertaining take on English political life.
Following Paradise Postponed and Titmuss Regained, the first two volumes in Mr. Mortimer's Rapstone Chronicles, The Sound Of Trumpets showcases the author at the peak of his acerbic wit, and reintroduces readers to Leslie Titmuss, MP, now a bitter, self-absorbed retiree who has little interest in his son or grandchildren, "whose names eluded him but to whom he sent modest cheques at Christmas with strict instructions that the money should be invested and not spent on computer games, C.D.s, rollerblades or any such unprofitable trifles."
What Lord Titmuss does have is an appetite for revenge upon those he considers traitorous and a gift for Machiavellian plotting.
When the local Tory MP meets an untimely and unseemly end (floating face down with a ping-pong ball in his mouth), young, ambitious Labourite Terry Flitton is nominated to stand for the now vacant seat representing the long Tory held districts of Hartscombe and Worsfield South.
A former employee of S.C.R.A.P. (The Society for Rural and Arboreal Protection), Terry is married to beautiful Kate, who is as devoted to saving the world as she is to vegetarianism. Terry is both charismatic and foolhardy. Upon meeting Agnes, the attractive fifty-year-old proprietress of a Socialist pamphlet strewn bookstore, he begins an affair with her.
Agnes sees Terry as one who will work for a Utopian world; Lord Titmuss sees him as a puppet to be manipulated.
Seeking retribution for supposed sins by his fellow conservatives, Lord Titmuss secretly masterminds the young Labour candidate's campaign. It is an uphill battle as the zealous hopeful becomes caught up in a B-list fox hunt, although he is pro animal rights; inadvertently appears soft on criminal offenders during a radio interview; and is found en deshabille with Agnes.
As a last resort, in a scene that hilariously punctures the pompous, Lord Titmuss the man who has been "the heart and soul of the Conservative Party" blends the wisdom of the Book of Ecclesiastes and the skewed logic that it is time for his party to lose as he delivers a public endorsement of Terry Flitton.
The crowd is stunned: "If Lord Titmuss had stripped and done a full frontal dance on the town hall steps they would not have been so astounded or, indeed, embarrassed." Nonetheless, they are obedient and Flitton wins the election handily.
However, the devilish Lord Titmuss does not rest. He mapped the young politicos heady rise; now he engineers a precipitous fall.
Mr. Mortimer's portraits of English eccentrics are unparalleled from Lord Titmuss's housekeeper, the fussbudget Mrs. Ragg who "either mothered him or, in moments of wild embarrassment, tried to flirt with him" to the acolytes surrounding Terry. They have their list of undesirable activities: "Selling alcoholic lemonade, catapults, war-like toys and bows and arrows of a certain size would be dealt with by imprisonment, as would holding raves, hang-gliding and disseminating books containing racially biased stories to persons of a tender age."
There is both pungency and pathos in the author's satire. The Sound Of Trumpets may be the final volume in this trilogy, but with John Mortimer one always hopes for more.
- Gail Cooke
Following Paradise Postponed and Titmuss Regained, the first two volumes in Mr. Mortimer's Rapstone Chronicles, The Sound Of Trumpets showcases the author at the peak of his acerbic wit, and reintroduces readers to Leslie Titmuss, MP, now a bitter, self-absorbed retiree who has little interest in his son or grandchildren, "whose names eluded him but to whom he sent modest cheques at Christmas with strict instructions that the money should be invested and not spent on computer games, C.D.s, rollerblades or any such unprofitable trifles."
What Lord Titmuss does have is an appetite for revenge upon those he considers traitorous and a gift for Machiavellian plotting.
When the local Tory MP meets an untimely and unseemly end (floating face down with a ping-pong ball in his mouth), young, ambitious Labourite Terry Flitton is nominated to stand for the now vacant seat representing the long Tory held districts of Hartscombe and Worsfield South.
A former employee of S.C.R.A.P. (The Society for Rural and Arboreal Protection), Terry is married to beautiful Kate, who is as devoted to saving the world as she is to vegetarianism. Terry is both charismatic and foolhardy. Upon meeting Agnes, the attractive fifty-year-old proprietress of a Socialist pamphlet strewn bookstore, he begins an affair with her.
Agnes sees Terry as one who will work for a Utopian world; Lord Titmuss sees him as a puppet to be manipulated.
Seeking retribution for supposed sins by his fellow conservatives, Lord Titmuss secretly masterminds the young Labour candidate's campaign. It is an uphill battle as the zealous hopeful becomes caught up in a B-list fox hunt, although he is pro animal rights; inadvertently appears soft on criminal offenders during a radio interview; and is found en deshabille with Agnes.
As a last resort, in a scene that hilariously punctures the pompous, Lord Titmuss the man who has been "the heart and soul of the Conservative Party" blends the wisdom of the Book of Ecclesiastes and the skewed logic that it is time for his party to lose as he delivers a public endorsement of Terry Flitton.
The crowd is stunned: "If Lord Titmuss had stripped and done a full frontal dance on the town hall steps they would not have been so astounded or, indeed, embarrassed." Nonetheless, they are obedient and Flitton wins the election handily.
However, the devilish Lord Titmuss does not rest. He mapped the young politicos heady rise; now he engineers a precipitous fall.
Mr. Mortimer's portraits of English eccentrics are unparalleled from Lord Titmuss's housekeeper, the fussbudget Mrs. Ragg who "either mothered him or, in moments of wild embarrassment, tried to flirt with him" to the acolytes surrounding Terry. They have their list of undesirable activities: "Selling alcoholic lemonade, catapults, war-like toys and bows and arrows of a certain size would be dealt with by imprisonment, as would holding raves, hang-gliding and disseminating books containing racially biased stories to persons of a tender age."
There is both pungency and pathos in the author's satire. The Sound Of Trumpets may be the final volume in this trilogy, but with John Mortimer one always hopes for more.
- Gail Cooke
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