Richard Temple: A Novel

This novel confounded my expectations. I’ve read and delighted in the former part of the Aubrey & Maturin series, so I rather assumed that this novel would have a similar tone. In fact, it reminded me of a combination of ‘Brideshead Revisited’, ‘The Spy Who Came In From the Cold’, and ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’. Waugh, le Carré, and Orwell, quite a mixture. The novel is structured as a flashback - the eponymous protagonist is a prisoner of war, revisiting his life so far as he recovers from the latest interrogation.

The tone struck me as fairly dreamlike; seemingly important happenings were only ever alluded to vaguely. Something about a fire, for instance. Richard Temple remained quite elusive as a character, show more considering the reader is inside his head. I suspect this to be because he seemed to be perpetually reacting to events, without ever seeming sure of what he wanted. Indeed, painting appeared to be the only thing that he was sure of. I don’t object to this and I was sympathetic to Temple much of the time, but it made the novel feel meandering.

As it was the library’s only copy, I ended up reading a large print version of this book, which was initially odd, although I don’t think it altered my experience to any notable extent. I take issue with the blurb, however, which claims that, ‘Temple is rescued by the love of a beautiful and wealthy woman’. I think it is more that he acquires her friendship and patronage; love is a mysterious and elusive notion in this book. At various times Temple is rescued by various different people. Moreover, this is not 'a tale of espionage' and the Second World War is only mentioned at the end.

What I definitely appreciated in this book was O’Brian’s beautiful writing. Every paragraph had an elegance to it, with never a word out of place. ‘Richard Temple’ also taught me a the delightful phrase, ‘agenbite of inwit,’ which means a prick of conscience. show less

I really like Patrick O'Brian's historical fiction series about the British navy (Master and Commander is the first book of the series), so I had high hopes for this unknown title. I found the main character, Richard Temple, to be whiny and unappealing. After the first 5 chapters, I am giving up on this one....

Are the conditions for art found only in a kind of imprisonment? Richard Temple is a well-realised character reflecting on his life in a cell tortured as a SOE agent in WW2. This is a classic tale of an outsider struggling to become an painter in the class-bound society of 1930s England.

I have not encountered Patrick O'Brian before. His seems to be a dark vision, perhaps Romantic, in the sense that art comes from suffering, and suffering is to be endured.