- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition edition (3 July 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571204244
- ISBN-13: 978-0571204243
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.6 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 215,477 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Towards the End of the Morning
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Michael Frayn's classic is set in the crossword and nature-notes department of an obscure national newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street, where John Dyson dreams wistfully of fame and the gentlemanly life - until one day his great chance of glory at last arrives.
About the Author
Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His novels include Towards the End of the Morning, The Trick of It and A Landing on the Sun. Headlong (1999) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while his most recent novel, Spies (2002), won the Whitbread Novel Award. His fifteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen and most recently Afterlife. He is married to the writer Claire Tomalin.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm a journalist and although the world Michael Frayn describes is long gone, there were some moments of recognition even now. Fellow hacks will absolutely love the description of the press trip (and much else), but this isn't just a book for those in the trade: rather, it's a minor classic in the grand old tradition of British farce. Michael Frayn is extremely good at slipping in to other people's voices and the main character, Dyson, is one of the few literary examples of journalist as everyman. Read it, you'll love it.
49 of 53 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Written in 1967 (at that time, the present day), the book is set in a Fleet Street which no longer exists. Wapping has long since superseded Grub Street, both in work practices and in technology. Frayn, in hindsight, gives us a fascinating insight into newspaper journalism as it was, not as it is now.
The setting is a monolithic and nameless Fleet Street Daily. Dyson, 40's, a married, mortgaged dreamer and father of two, is head of a backwater covering nature notes, crosswords and "yesteryear". His staff is Bob, an aimless 29 year old single graduate and old Eddy Moulton, nearer the end of his days than he realises and compiler of the "100 Years Ago This Day" column.
Dyson dreams of recognition, wider success and celebrity status but seems unable to escape the lethargy of the work, despite attempting occasional, febrile bursts of it. Bob's chief office activity is eating toffees from a bag in his desk and writing vacuous love letters to his young girlfriend Tess at her finishing school. Eddy spends his days poring over yellowed back numbers and lives wholly in the past.
Life has continued in this way for aeons. What little work done is confined to the late morning, before the staff repair to the pub for the obligatory journalistic liquid lunch and gossip with the other staff hacks. The editor, a distant, shadowy figure, has never been seen by anyone. He communicates, Howard Hughes - like, by note. At one point, he attempts to sack the pictures editor, the embittered Reg. Mounce, using an unsigned memo. Reg., believing this to be a joke perpetrated by his peers, ignores his dismissal, carries on with his job and is still employed weeks later.
The afternoon passes in the customary beery trance until the deadline approaches. In Dyson's
department of course, this has no effect whatsoever, given the timeless nature of the copy. Their only indication that the deadline has passed is the distant rumble of the presses below.
This routine is set to continue for ever, until three things happen. Eddy Moulton dies quietly at his desk, undiscovered for hours; Dyson is asked to appear on late night television with a panel of experts and Bob's girlfriend arrives with marriage written in capitals at the top of her agenda. The comic pace is fast and furious. Eddy's death creates a vacancy for Erskine, a talented, capable and laconic graduate who, within weeks, has taken over the department by stealth.
Dyson has too many pre-TV appearance gins in the hospitality suite and, on air, can say nothing but "how fascinating", again and again. Helpless Bob, loved by Tess, mothered by Mounce's wife and platonically and confusedly desired by Mrs. Dyson, progresses not one of these relationships and fails to take his one chance to escape. It is Erskine, a chilly precursor of the '80s yuppie, who finally wins the rewards.
Frayn's background in journalism as a Guardian and Observer columnist is clearly on show throughout. He uses more than just pale shades of his former colleagues, all finely drawn and
convincingly set in their now vanished dusty Fleet Street offices. How hard it is to imagine any one of them surviving today's frenetic newspaper world! The fast paced, witty narrative carries the reader compulsively from one comic episode to the next, right through to the hilarious climax. Read this accomplished, sophisticated novel. You will not be disappointed.
The setting is a monolithic and nameless Fleet Street Daily. Dyson, 40's, a married, mortgaged dreamer and father of two, is head of a backwater covering nature notes, crosswords and "yesteryear". His staff is Bob, an aimless 29 year old single graduate and old Eddy Moulton, nearer the end of his days than he realises and compiler of the "100 Years Ago This Day" column.
Dyson dreams of recognition, wider success and celebrity status but seems unable to escape the lethargy of the work, despite attempting occasional, febrile bursts of it. Bob's chief office activity is eating toffees from a bag in his desk and writing vacuous love letters to his young girlfriend Tess at her finishing school. Eddy spends his days poring over yellowed back numbers and lives wholly in the past.
Life has continued in this way for aeons. What little work done is confined to the late morning, before the staff repair to the pub for the obligatory journalistic liquid lunch and gossip with the other staff hacks. The editor, a distant, shadowy figure, has never been seen by anyone. He communicates, Howard Hughes - like, by note. At one point, he attempts to sack the pictures editor, the embittered Reg. Mounce, using an unsigned memo. Reg., believing this to be a joke perpetrated by his peers, ignores his dismissal, carries on with his job and is still employed weeks later.
The afternoon passes in the customary beery trance until the deadline approaches. In Dyson's
department of course, this has no effect whatsoever, given the timeless nature of the copy. Their only indication that the deadline has passed is the distant rumble of the presses below.
This routine is set to continue for ever, until three things happen. Eddy Moulton dies quietly at his desk, undiscovered for hours; Dyson is asked to appear on late night television with a panel of experts and Bob's girlfriend arrives with marriage written in capitals at the top of her agenda. The comic pace is fast and furious. Eddy's death creates a vacancy for Erskine, a talented, capable and laconic graduate who, within weeks, has taken over the department by stealth.
Dyson has too many pre-TV appearance gins in the hospitality suite and, on air, can say nothing but "how fascinating", again and again. Helpless Bob, loved by Tess, mothered by Mounce's wife and platonically and confusedly desired by Mrs. Dyson, progresses not one of these relationships and fails to take his one chance to escape. It is Erskine, a chilly precursor of the '80s yuppie, who finally wins the rewards.
Frayn's background in journalism as a Guardian and Observer columnist is clearly on show throughout. He uses more than just pale shades of his former colleagues, all finely drawn and
convincingly set in their now vanished dusty Fleet Street offices. How hard it is to imagine any one of them surviving today's frenetic newspaper world! The fast paced, witty narrative carries the reader compulsively from one comic episode to the next, right through to the hilarious climax. Read this accomplished, sophisticated novel. You will not be disappointed.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Whilst the journalists have left Fleet Street and the Lunchtime O'Booze is a thing of the past, this book feels very contemporary in its description of London: the middle class professional buying property in a destitute 'up and coming' area, the lure of television, and the tedium of work.
Brilliantly written- economical, trenchant, extremely funny. Justifiably compared to 'Scoop'
Highly highly recommended (in fact, better to my mind than 'Headlong')
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Michael Frayn - Towards the End of the Morning
Frayn writes in his introduction that "No-one, for some reason, can remember the title I gave it" (the novel). Read more
Published 11 days ago by DJJ
"Many people had worked on the paper for twenty years, and never once...
Set in the time before Wapping, when newspapers were put together in Fleet Street and streets off - like Hand and Ball Court, where a particular paper has rambling premises that... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Eileen Shaw
Great fun....
I had forgotten how funny Michael Frayn's writing could be. Towards End of the Morning is a comic novel set in a newspaper office in the 1960s - a cross between The Observer and... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Wynne Kelly
Towards the End of the Morning
Light hearted look at the newspaper industry when Fleet Street was the main hub of this enterprise. The story follows the hopes and ambitions of John Dyson, who tired of being... Read more
Published 17 months ago by N. A. Spencer
book review
Had expected to laugh a lot and it I didnt even smile. Would only recommend it to men in the journalism profession in the 60/70s. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Jane
Decent and enjoyable
One of Michael's Frayn's earlier novels, although it isn't up to the very high standards of 'Headlong' or 'Spies', you can clearly see the signs here that have made Frayn a great... Read more
Published on 7 May 2010 by BookWorm
It's All in the Title
An incredibly precocious novel, written by the then 31 year-old Frayn, yet displaying the insights and technique of writers 30 years his senior. Read more
Published on 23 Feb 2010 by Parthurbook
towards the end of the morning
This book has not stood the test of time. Twice in the blurb on the cover the author is compared to Evelyn Waugh a comparison I feel is undeserved. Read more
Published on 12 Aug 2009 by Michel Bourquin
Great writing, entertaining read
I didn't get the outbursts of laughter of some of the other reviewers but I did thoroughly enjoy Michael Frayn's lively writing style and found the book an entertaining mix of... Read more
Published on 2 Mar 2008 by Bluebell
Entertaining in parts but inconsistent
Lets get this straight. Very little of the action of this book takes place in Fleet Street; it is mainly concerned with the travails of a couple of sub-editors trying to find... Read more
Published on 17 Jan 2007 by Caterkiller
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