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A review by bookpossum
Blott On The Landscape by Tom Sharpe
3.0
Very clever and totally absurd. Sharpe has some shrewd and funny observations in among the nonsense. In describing one of the principal characters, a government bureaucrat called Dundridge:
"In practical terms Dundridge was clearly a disaster. On the other hand he did have a flair for public relations. His schemes sounded good and year by year Dundridge had been promoted, carried upward by an ineluctable wave of inefficiency and the need to save the public the practical consequences of his latest idea until he had reached that rarefied zone of administration where, thanks to the inertia of his subordinates, his projects could never be implemented."
Then there was this description of a not so stately home:
"Ahead lay Handyman Hall. It stood, an amalgam in stone and brick, timber and tile and turret, a monument to all that was most eclectic and least attractive in English architecture. To Dundridge, himself a devotee of function, for whom simplicity was all, it was a nightmare. Ruskin and Morris, Gilbert Scott, Vanbrugh, Inigo Jones and Wren to name but a few had all lent their influence to a building that combined the utility of a water-tower with the homeliness of Wormwood Scrubs."
Very good fun. 3.5 stars.
"In practical terms Dundridge was clearly a disaster. On the other hand he did have a flair for public relations. His schemes sounded good and year by year Dundridge had been promoted, carried upward by an ineluctable wave of inefficiency and the need to save the public the practical consequences of his latest idea until he had reached that rarefied zone of administration where, thanks to the inertia of his subordinates, his projects could never be implemented."
Then there was this description of a not so stately home:
"Ahead lay Handyman Hall. It stood, an amalgam in stone and brick, timber and tile and turret, a monument to all that was most eclectic and least attractive in English architecture. To Dundridge, himself a devotee of function, for whom simplicity was all, it was a nightmare. Ruskin and Morris, Gilbert Scott, Vanbrugh, Inigo Jones and Wren to name but a few had all lent their influence to a building that combined the utility of a water-tower with the homeliness of Wormwood Scrubs."
Very good fun. 3.5 stars.