Lost Empires

A novel written as a memoir, this is narrated by Richard Herncastle, the famous English painter. Left poor and on his own at twenty, Richard is surprised to be rescued by the black sheep of the family, his Uncle Nick, a magician on the traveling music hall circuit of 1913. Becoming part of Nick's act, learning about thinking on one's feet and living with the people who made their living moving from stage to stage gives Richard experiences he never would have had in his tiny Northern town.

On the surface, this probably sounds like a book of sweet nostalgia for the days of the Edwardian music halls. The world of acrobats, dog acts and audiences adoring grown women dressed as little girls are remembered, but not with fondness. Richard's show more dealings with his prickly Uncle Nick, his attractions to women and his growing confidence make up the real plot, but we also get an affair with an older woman, violence and infidelities, a murder and Uncle Nick's treatment of his girlfriend Cissie is the opposite of romantic. Highly recommended. show less

This is a darker, less idyllic counterpart to The Good Companions (1929). Whilst the earlier book had a contemporary setting, contrasting the picaresque adventures of a seaside concert party with the grim reality of the great depression, Lost Empires was written in the sixties and set fifty years earlier on the eve of the first world war. To make this historical perspective explicit, there is a frame story where "Priestley" visits the watercolourist Herncastle at his retirement cottage in the Dales and is given a copy of Herncastle's reminiscences of the period in 1913-1914 when he worked as assistant to his uncle, a music hall illusionist.

As in The Good Companions, we get to see the unpleasant side of show business - hard work, long show more hours, back-stabbing and bitter rivalry, but there is none of the sense of glamour and escapism. Herncastle is an artist: he doesn't care about the stage, and is working for his uncle because it pays better than clerking in a woollen mill and offers the chance of free time in daylight for sketching. As a bonus (and since this is a novel of the sixties) the theatre also offers him more opportunities for sex.

This is an unusual book - normally you would expect a work set in 1913-1914, especially with such a title, to be regretting a lost world smashed by the war (cf. Larkin's "Never such innocence, / Never before or since"). But Priestley makes it clear that the world of the pre-war music hall stage was full of evil and corruption, and that Herncastle could be redeemed from it only by the purging effect of military service in the war. We get lots of colourful period detail, but there isn't an ounce of nostalgia here: Priestley has seen the old and new worlds and is convinced that the new one is better. show less

A magician who is part of a traveling variety show in pre-World War I Britain brings his nephew in to help stage the show, and even participate in some of the tricks. As the story moved from one character to another, one town to another, one event to another, it never disappointed me. Story-telling at its best, in my opinion. A thumping good read.

The story of Richard Herncastle, a young lad from the North of England who goes to work for his stage magician uncle as WWI is about to break loose. Not exactly great literature but highly entertaining. This is the second novel I've read by J.B. Priestley. The guy really knows how to tell a story.

Just wonderful.