September 1960
The hero of this novel, Henry Lamb, has written a first novel, Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen, which was intended as a quiet piece of mischief, but the intelligentsia hail it as a fearless work of social significance, and Mr Lamb becomes a celebrity to the utter dismay of his father and uncle - the latter at once leaving for the Himalayas. Mr. Lamb is offered the post of Special Caribbean Correspondent to Torch, a new progressive weekly subsidised by big business.
This is the opening of a novel which seems to me the funniest since Scoop, and indeed Henry Lamb and William Boot have much in common - including good manners and a kind heart. There is an awful voyage - exacerbated by Christmas - with the passengers divided into those who ‘feel that they have a contribution to make’, including the cultural Wendy Perowne, and those like Father Pink and our hero who simply make it…
In Port of Spain, Henry, who has been told by his editor - another intellectual humanitarian - to write exactly what he likes about what he sees, innocently sets about this, which lands him in deep disgrace with the Government, Torch, Miss Perowne and absolutely everybody who expected contributions in keeping with the fashionable views held about his novel. On the credit side are Father Pink and the magnificent Candida Firebrace - a child both of God and nature - and the fact that his family are unreservedly proud of his total failure.
Miss Honor takes the mickey out of a certain brand of crass poseurs who cannot ever see a tree for the wood: she is continuously amusing without ever being bitter, and she is positive in the sense that she does not confine herself to pulling everybody into their absurd component parts - Henry Lamb is a bewitching character.