Editorial Reviews: |
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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
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