J. I. M. Stewart (1) (1906–1994)

This is, quite simply, my favourite novel EVER.

It is, as it happens, the second volumes in a sequence of five (A Staircase in Surrey) that chronicles Duncan Pattullo's experiences at, and relationship with, a fictional Oxford college. In the first instalment, The Gaudy, which is set in the late 1960s or very early 1970s, Pattullo, now a successful playwright, returns to Oxford for the first time in more than twenty years to attend a celebratory old boys' dinner at the college. During this show more visit he meets some of his contemporaries and, after inadvertently becoming embroiled in resolving an unsavoury episode involving the son of his closest friend from student days, he finds himself being offered the opportunity to take up a Fellowship in Modern European Drama.

For this second instalment Stewart takes us back to Pattullo's first year as an undergraduate. in 1945 or 1946. Raised in Edinburgh and educated at what is clearly meant to be Fettes, young Duncan Pattullo had never initially entertained the dream of going to Oxford. However, fate, in the form of his unorthodox father intervened with dramatic consequences. Lachlan Pattullo is an accomplished artist, generally specialising in landscapes, though not above accepting commissions for portraits. One recent such commission had required him to paint Professor McKechnie, a dreary though capable academic at Edinburgh University. McKechnie is a sombre and quiet man except upon the subject of his son Ranald, a schoolmate of Duncan's. Fed up of hearing the ceaseless eulogies about Ranald and his imminent departure on a scholarship to Oxford, Lachlan arranges for Duncan to have a shot at the John Ruskin Scholarship, which he successfully bags. Stewart gives us a lovely cameo in which young Pattullo first encounters the gathering of rather upper class English alumni of the more accomplished public schools, but without resorting to crass stereotyping - all of the boys seem immensely plausible.

Duncan is beset with all of the regular dilemmas and challenges of growing up, though it is clear that he immediately falls in love with everything about Oxford. He soon becomes friendly with the fellow residents on the staircase in Surrey quadrangle where his rooms are located, notably Tony Mumford (who would later evolve in Lord Marchpayne, Cabinet member), Gavin Moggridge and Cyril Bedworth. There are scenes of high comedy mixed with others of great sensitivity.

Stewart's masterful cameos are not just restricted to Pattullo's fellow students. Edward Pococke, Provost of the College, is a picture of urbanity and tends towards courteous litotes, while Duncan's two personal tutors, the permanently distracted Albert Talbert and the mage-like J B Timbermill, are particulrly finely drawn. The latter, who teaches Duncan the wonders of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English literature (my own chosen area of specialisation as an undergraduate) is clearly modelled on J R R Tolkien.

Alongside the beautiful depiction of Oxford in the 1940s Stewart also gives an insight into Duncan's far from conventional homelife which includes a slightly mad uncle, the self-styled laird of Glencorry whose Highland retreat Duncan visits at length.

I have often wondered why this novel means so much to me, and I have never quite put my finger on it. Still, I have read it many times already, and I look forward to reading it many time more! show less

I found re-reading this novel particularly moving. This is the third volume in Stewart's masterful sequence A Staircase in Surrey and it opens with Duncan Pattullo embarking on a new career as a Fellow of his old Oxford College. I had the great good fortune to enjoy a brief tenure as a (decidedly junior) Fellow of an Oxford College during the early/mid 1980s, perhaps ten or fifteen years after this novel is set, and despite that slight time lag I felt that I could recognise almost everything show more that Pattullo encounters. Certainly the relationships between the different tenants of the staircase struck all too poignant a chord with me.

After all, Stewart himself was an accomplished academic, publishing a series of highly regarded works on late nineteenth/early twentieth century English literature (with particular emphasis on Conrad), so he knew what he was talking about.

The plot revolves around an academic wrangle over a manuscript donated to the College by Lord Blunderville, one of its more celebrated alumni who had eventually risen to be Prime Minister at some unspecified spell between the World Wars. In the preceding volume, Young Pattullo, set during Duncan's time as an undergraduate, we happened to be present when Christopher Cressey, an aloof history don, made away with the book in question, seemingly with the former Prime Minister's blessing. More than twenty years on Cressey still has the manuscript, and the College is now striving to recover it using whatever means are available to it. Duncan is bemused, wondering why so much consternation should arise from the fate of this small book.

Meanwhile the loutish Ivo Mumford, son of Duncan's closest friend from his own student days, is struggling to retain his place in the College having completely fluffed his exams while revelling in the rowdy exploits of the Uffington Club, an exclusive clique of wealthy rowdies (presumably modelled on an early incarnation of David Cameron's Bullingdon Club). Duncan invites the wretched Ivo to launch with a view to trying to encourage him to greater application to his books. These advances are roundly snubbed, though Ivo does tell Duncan that he has been working with a friend to develop a new University magazine by the name of Priapus. Duncan is understandably concerned!

However, the plot, though engaging, is almost superfluous to the glory of the book. Stewart captures the eternal contradictions that bedevil almost every aspect of life in academic Oxford. The College basks in its centuries-long history and proudly defends its traditions, yet is also alive to the changing demands of its undergraduates in times of changing social mores. Personal animosities flourish between the Fellows, yet they are capable of immense sensitivity to the plight of their undergraduates.

Though far shorter than Anthony Powell's beautiful A Dance to the Music of Time, there are great similarities, not least in the use of hilarious scenes underpinned with waves of melancholy. Indeed, one of the leading characters, Cyril Bedworth, has made a career on critical appraisal of Anthony Powell's novels.

Eternally enchanting - I could happily re-read this series every year. show less

This novel is simply marvellous. Written with effortless grace, it is a beautiful paean to Oxford and the academic life, though it does not refrain from sending up the pomposity and internecine plotting of the dons. The Gaudy is the first of a series of five novels which, to my mind, represent the finest roman fleuve in an academic setting.

The novel opens with Oxford alumnus Duncan Pattullo returning to his old college, probably either in the late 1960s or possibly the early 1970s, for the show more first time in more than twenty years since he graduated. He is there to attend a Gaudy (a celebratory dinner for old members). Right from the start he is overwhelmed with nostalgia, put up in his old rooms and almost immediately bumping into his old tutor. The nostalgia is slightly discomforting, though he soon encounters Tony Mumford, perhaps his closest friend from student days. Oddly, however, they have never met during the intervening twenty years.

Mumford has been very successful since graduating. Having made a fortune in the City he embarked upon a career in politics which has taken him into the House of Lords. On the day of the Gaudy there is a government reshuffle, and the evening news includes an announcement of his elevation to the Cabinet. Mumford does, however, have an ulterior motive in coming back to the college as it transpires that his son, Ivo (possessed of an unrivalled lack of grace) is struggling to pass the end of year exams, and his future in the college hangs delicately in the balance.

Pattullo also encounters Gavin Moggridge, an unremarkable student who had inadvertently embarked on a career of dazzling adventure entirely unexpected of, or even by, him, and Cyril Bedworth, a formerly dim undergraduate, who two decades before had had viewed Pattullo and Mumford with untrammelled admiration. Throughout the formal dinner Pattullo's attention wavers between the present day and his undergraduate days (and even his earlier schooldays in Edinburgh), and his perceptions are constantly re-defined.

The portraits of Albert Talbert, the aging tutor whose grasp on the world around is as lacking in acuity as his name is lacking in euphony, and Edward Pococke, the extraordinarily urbane Provost of the College, are finely drawn yet never succumb to cliché. Plot, the careworn scout on Pattullo's old staircase, and Nick Junkin, the engaging though slightly mentally dislocated undergraduate who now occupies Pattullo's old rooms, are so credible that I feel I know them.

Stewart was a noted academic himself, producing several detailed analyses of early twentieth century literature, and, under the pseudonym Michael Innes, was one of the most dextrous exponents of the ‘cosy’, gentleman detective genre. Yet the sequence that this novel opens was surely the crowning glory of his fruitful career. show less

I found re-reading this novel particularly moving. This is the third volume in Stewart's masterful sequence A Staircase in Surrey and it opens with Duncan Pattullo embarking on a new career as a Fellow of his old Oxford College. I had the great good fortune to enjoy a brief tenure as a Fellow of an Oxford College during the early/mid 1980s, perhaps ten or fifteen years after this novel is set, and despite that slight time lag I felt that I could recognise almost everything that Pattullo show more encounters. Certainly the relationships between the different tenants of the staircase struck all too poignant a chord with me.

After all, Stewart himself was an accomplished academic, publishing a series of highly regarded works on late nineteenth/early twentieth century English literature (with particular emphasis on Conrad), so he knew what he was talking about.

The plot revolves around an academic wrangle over a manuscript donated to the College by Lord Blunderville, one of its more celebrated alumni who had eventually risen to be Prime Minister at some unspecified spell between the World Wars. In the preceding volume, Young Pattullo, set during Duncan's time as an undergraduate, we happened to be present when Christopher Cressey, an aloof history don, made away with the book in question, seemingly with the former Prime Minister's blessing. More than twenty years on Cressey still has the manuscript, and the College is now striving to recover it using whatever means are available to it. Duncan is bemused, wondering why so much consternation should arise from the fate of this small book.

Meanwhile the loutish Ivo Mumford, son of Duncan's closest friend from his own student days, is struggling to retain his place in the College having completely fluffed his exams while revelling in the rowdy exploits of the Uffington Club, an exclusive clique of wealthy rowdies (presumably modelled on an early incarnation of David Cameron's Bullingdon Club). Duncan invites the wretched Ivo to launch with a view to trying to encourage him to greater application to his books. These advances are roundly snubbed, though Ivo does tell Duncan that he has been working with a friend to develop a new University magazine by the name of Priapus. Duncan is understandably concerned!

However, the plot, though engaging, is almost superfluous to the glory of the book. Stewart captures the eternal contradictions that bedevil almost every aspect of life in academic Oxford. The College basks in its centuries-long history and proudly defends its traditions, yet is also alive to the changing demands of its undergraduates in times of changing social mores. Personal animosities flourish between the Fellows, yet they are capable of immense sensitivity to the plight of their undergraduates.

Though far shorter than Anthony Powell's beautiful A Dance to the Music of Time, there are great similarities, not least in the use of hilarious scenes underpinned with waves of melancholy. Indeed, one of the leading character, Cyril Bedworth, has made a career on critical appraisal of Anthony Powell's novels.

Eternally enchanting - I could happily re-read this series every year. show less