You have only to glance at the icing-sugar pink dust-jacket of The Prince buys the Manor to realise that there is a factual basis for Elspeth Huxley's 'extravaganza'. There, nestling in the wooded Cotswolds, is the familiar facade of the rather ordinary country house which has recently been dignified by the arrival of A Royal Personage. The gossip columns of the evening papers have confirmed, as the reader suspects, that the aliases scattered throughout the novel are transparent to someone with no more than a modest knowledge of the society and geography of Tetbury. The fictional 'Ah Wong Chinese Takeaway', not to mention 'Pellett, the Health Food Shop', turn out to have their counterparts in the authentic Cotswold world. Scratch the surface a little, frequent the disguised 'Goat and Compasses', and you will perhaps succeed in unveiling 'Lady Evers', the socially energetic wife of an ex-Governor of the 'Laxative Islands', or 'Judy Mustard', whose ecological fervour does not shrink from the extreme of offering her fellow believers home-made wine derived from 'Purging Buckthorn'.

LRB 4 November 1982 | PDF Download