Past Imperfect - Softcover

Fellowes, Julian

3.6

6,210 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312570805 ISBN 13: 9780312570804

Publisher: Griffin, 2010

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From the creator of the Emmy Award-winning Downton Abbey...

“Damian Baxter was a friend of mine at Cambridge. We met around the time when I was doing the Season at the end of the Sixties. I introduced him to some of the girls. They took him up, and we ran about together in London for a while....”

Nearly forty years later, the narrator hates Damian Baxter and would gladly forget their disastrous last encounter. But if it is pleasant to hear from an old friend, it is more interesting to hear from an old enemy, and so he accepts an invitation from the rich and dying Damian, who begs him to track down the past girlfriend whose anonymous letter claimed he had fathered a child during that ruinous debutante season.

The search takes the narrator back to the extraordinary world of swinging London, where aristocratic parents schemed to find suitable matches for their daughters while someone was putting hash in the brownies at a ball at Madame Tussaud’s. It was a time when everything seemed to be changing—and it was, but not always quite as expected.

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Review:

A gloriously funny, bumpy ride through modern times. (Andrew Barrow THE EVENING STANDARD)

he knows too, how to create memorable characters. Working with an upper-class cast Fellowes populates PAST IMPERFECT with a gallery of sometimes grotesque but mostly affetionately drawn toffs - acidly observed by the narrator, ever peevish, ever diverting. (Peter Burton THE DAILY EXPRESS)

PAST IMPERFECT is both a historical document for that vanished era and a comedy of manners....... sharply perceptive and required reading for anyone who was there. (Claire Colvin THE DAILY MAIL)

Its plot cannot fail to grip the reader...... what elevates this novel to much more than a comedy of manners is the depth of compassion the author displays for his characters. (Elisa Segrave THE SPECTATOR)

An elegant satire, it offers an entertaining commentary on our times and a heartfelt lament for a kinder, more courteous Britain (Sebastian Shakespeare TATLER)

A witty take on the world as it was and is now' (WOMAN AND HOME)

It is amusingly written, ends neatly, quietly subverts the surface stereotyping of its characters, and will have a certain kind of social historian swooning with pleasure. (DJ Taylor THE GUARDIAN)

Very entertaining - think a more self-aware and sophisticated Jilly Cooper..... the result is that rare thing - an intelligent and insightful blockbuster. (GLOSS MAGAZINE)

An elegy for a long-lost class ill-equipped to deal with its inevitable demise. (Clare Allfree METRO)

A funny poignant story from the actor and Oscar-winning writer of Gosford Park (BELLA MAGAZINE)

Book Description:

Sunday Times bestselling author of SNOBS and Oscar winning writer of the screenplay for GOSFORD PARK returns with a thrilling new novel

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