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They Knew Mr.Knight
 
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They Knew Mr.Knight (Paperback)

by Dorothy Whipple (Author), Terence Handley (Introduction), Christopher Beauman (Introduction)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.00
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They Knew Mr.Knight + They Were Sisters + The Priory
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Product details

  • Paperback: 496 pages
  • Publisher: Persephone Books Ltd; New ed of 1934 ed edition (22 Sep 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1903155088
  • ISBN-13: 978-1903155080
  • Product Dimensions: 19 x 14.2 x 4.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 28,211 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

A Book Society Choice, shortlisted for the Femina-Vie Heureuse Prize, the second Dorothy Whipple novel we publish is also wonderfully well-written in a clear and straightforward style; yet 'this real treat' ("Sunday Telegraph") is far more subtle than it at first appears. The Blakes are an ordinary family: Celia looks after the house and Thomas works at the family engineering business in Leicester. The book begins when he meets Mr Knight, a financier as crooked as any on the front pages of our newspapers nowadays; and tracks his and his family's swift climb and fall.Part of the cause of the ensuing tragedy is Celia's innocence - blinkered by domesticity, she and her children are the 'victim of the turbulence of the outside world' (Postscript); but finally, through 'quiet tenacity and the refusal to let go of certain precious things, goodness does win out' (Afterword). And the "TLS" wrote: 'The portraits in the book are fired by Mrs Whipple's article of faith - the supreme importance of people.'


Excerpted from They Knew Mr.Knight by Dorothy Whipple. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Celia herself was not so happy in the drawing-room type of existence now thrust upon her. She missed the simple, busy life she had lived in the Grove. She missed her kitchen and her cooking, and she was cut off from the back door, which opened, it had always seemed to her on another aspect of life altogether. She could no longer comfort the coal man with a hot drink on a cold day or ask the vegetable woman in to get warm or rest a little....She pursued another form of charity now. She sat on committees and undertook to sell tickets for innumerable affairs. But the committees were often very tedious and she was not a good ticket-seller. She would say: 'Will you buy a ticket for so-and-so?' and then add: 'But don't if you don't really want one'....Celia disposed of most of her tickets herself......

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They Knew Mr.Knight
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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
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3 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Knight-time, 26 Feb 2004
By Simon Thomas "bookaholic" (Oxford/Somerset, UK) - See all my reviews
  
This book was recommended to me by a band of people, each of whom has opinions I deeply trust when it comes to books.

And I wasn't disappointed.

The Blake family live in an unspectacular house in an unspectacular road, and Thomas Blake has a... you guessed it, unspectacular job.
And then Mr. Knight, financier extraordinaire, comes onto the horizon, and helps the Blake family move up in the world - literally, into a fancier house, fancier road and fancier lifestyle. Thomas is delighted, but Celia, his wife, is less zealous. The reader, through the combined hints of Celia's doubts and Whipple's clever narrative, is rightly suspicious of Knight.

To see the changes in the Blake family is often sad, but Whipple enlivens this novel with wit throughout.
Fantastic

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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Devil and the Blake family, 20 Feb 2001
By Lynette Baines (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
Dorothy Whipple is, for me, the greatest rediscovery Persephone have made since they began reprinting unjustly forgotten books a couple of years ago. They knew Mr Knight is the story of the Blake family, and their gradual moral and financial downfall after they become involved with the financier, Mr Knight. The seduction begins on the first page, when Thomas Blake wakes with dissatisfaction at the fact that he must face another day in the engineering works his father sold- as he sees it, his inheritance has been denied him. He meets Mr Knight, and the financier advises him with investments. Gradually, most of the family are drawn into the fringes of Mr Knight's world. The advice he gives Thomas enables him to buy back the works, his daughter is able to realise her social ambitions, his son goes to a better school. Even his sensible wife, Celia, becomes entangled when she sees the prospect of buying the house she's always wanted. Their moral decline is subtly described, as Thomas becomes more entangled in Mr Knight's web. Dorothy Whipple shows how very easy it is to take the first step towards the precipice, and how long it can take to recover from the consequences.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars It'll end in tears..., 15 Feb 2007
A chance meeting introduces Thomas to Mr Knight, successful businessman. The novel proceeds and very few pages into the story the sense of foreboding for the family benefiting from Mr Knight's advice is almost unbearable and it continues in that vein. I was waiting for the tragedy all the way through! It was quite a stressful read because, as usual I really empathised with the characters. I have to say, I much preferred The Priory. There was no formula and the story was finely crafted. Young Anne was a less involved novel than The Priory but nonetheless enjoyable for the fine writing. They Knew Mr Knight was really a story where the end was obvious all the way through - we were just wondering when the house of cards would crash around their ears. Even so, Dorothy Whipple's insight into mother's realisation of the less attractive sides of their children's characters, the loss mothers feel when their children move away from their sphere and the love between couples even through adversity, is incisive and beautifully told. Her glimpses of the pressures which men endure in our society as the "breadwinner" is also there although Thomas is not so fully drawn as Celia. I have to agree with the other reviewers that Dorothy Whipple is a writer who deserves to be reissued and discovered by a lot more readers. Please read something by Ms Whipple today - but please start with The Priory.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Pact with the Devil
It's neck and neck as to whether this is my absolutely favourite Dorothy Whipple, or should it be Someone at a Distance? Anyway, this is DW at her finest. Read more
Published 3 months ago by booksetc

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful read!
Dorothy Whipple was a wonderful author , I have read all her books and loved this one.

The book sets the scene for a forgotten era ,the genteel... Read more
Published on 5 April 2007 by The Kitten

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