![]() ![]() Awash with historical tidbits and scenic diversions, we get snippets about the King John and the Magna Carta we get to take a virtual tour round Sonning, “ the most fairy-like little nook”, and we get a scurrilous account of the perhaps in“famous” (?) Medmanham monks and the bogus abbey better known as the “Hell Fire Club”. Reading “Three Men in a Boat”, formerly conceived to be a travel book for its times, is a bit like doing an extended boat tour of the Thames with an eccentric tour guide and his unmanageable pooch. It’s terribly haw-haw British, and the book rightfully earns its honourable place on the considerable Classics Club list. I can see that there could be something rather reassuring about dipping back into this book on occasion and revisiting certain scenes, for there is an abundance of comic moments. ![]() ![]() The subtitle of this witty ditty is “To Say Nothing of the Dog” – and who’d have thought that prime suspect Montgomery the fox terrier with attitude was the only character of the batch to be a figment of the author’s imagination?Ī critic from the Guardian guffawed that he “ fell out of bed laughing” after reading this (it would have been more appropriate had he tumbled into the Thames, mind you), and a comment from the Observer said rather wistfully that “ Reading it is like spending time with a favourite uncle whose anecdotes you’d happily listen to over and over again”, which I thought was rather nice. ![]()
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