Victor Canning (1911–1986)

This is another one of those delightful British series written between the 1930s and the 1950s and brought back by Farrago Books for our reading pleasure. When we meet Mr Finchley he is a dull, boring, unmarried clerk, 45 years old, and has never taken a holiday. His boss tells him to go and have some fun and forget about work for two or three weeks. Sounds odd to him, but he’s game and makes reservation at the seaside. That’s the plan, but so much for plans.

Each chapter is another show more adventure for Mr Finchley. In the beginning he agrees to watch a gentleman’s car for a moment and will then take his train to the seaside. Instead, he falls asleep in the back seat and is kidnapped when the car is stolen. Time and again he manages to extract himself from an unexpected and often unpleasant circumstance only to find himself throw right back into another unbelievable encounter. At first he is quite upset that he is missing out on his seaside vacation, but soon he discovers that the likes the outdoors and all the challenges he faces. It becomes a matter of personal pride for him to be able to “see it through” and “make the best of it.” Along the way he meets thieves, gypsies, a nobleman, a lunatic who just happens to look exactly like him, and smugglers. He is chased by people and animals and is caught in the heat and the cold and the rain.

The writing is superb and entertaining as only writing from this time period can be. Descriptions of the countryside, the animals, the people are rich, full and elegant. Each chapter is its own pleasing little story and the book presents a picture of an England that is either forgotten or was never known by those of us reading this today, customs and traditions and mores and language that are unfamiliar but comfortable all the same.

The longer we know Mr Finchley the more we like him. He isn’t really stuffy and rigid and prissy, but merely a man of his time and station who discovers many things about people and places – and himself – that he never knew. And is having a rollicking good time while on his journey of discoveries. Some of his escapades are a little frightening and some are laugh-out-loud funny; all are wonderful.

Thanks to Farrago Books for making Mr Finchley Discovers His England available again. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it without hesitation. All opinions are my own. show less

For decades Mr Finchley has worked as a solicitor's clerk, and has never had a vacation. When the firm is sold, Finchley's enlightened new boss gives him three weeks off. Plump, bald, forty-five year old Mr Finchley, a man intimidated by his landlady, decides to go to Margate, an unadventurous seaside resort, but on the way he is inadvertently kidnapped by gangsters, and his exciting holiday begins. Mr Finchley travels around England on foot, by bicycle, by train and bus, and even in a show more smuggler's boat. He makes friends with the people who take to the roads: gipsies, itinerant workers, a travelling vicar, an artist, an escaped lunatic. He sleeps by the side of the road, in barns, in tents and even in a mansion. The naive and trusting Mr Finchley gets along with everyone.

This cheerful, gently humorous, optimistic little book was a best seller in England in 1934. show less

Cheeky chimp Charlie gives the boffins the slip from a hush-hush government testing lab. He's loaded with more plague bacilli than you can poke a stick at.
Ministry chaps have to race around Wiltshire tracking him down before the population of Britain takes a tumble; meanwhile Charlie's gorging himself on strawberries, apples, rabbits, lettuces and carrots as he flits from copse to farm-yard in glorious mid-summer.
Fast reading but good on Victor Canning for keeping the thrillers up to his show more usual standard. show less

Picked up at random with a few others at a National Trust secondhand bookstall, this young adult story was a delightful surprise. Although it's the third in a trilogy, the story stands up by itself. The detailed portrayal of a falcon's life as she adjusts to living free in the wild is beautiful and absorbing, and the human characters are also working out their fate in a plot which keeps our interest.
An old-fashioned story but with a strong environmental warning (why have we still not heeded show more it over half a century later?) show less