The Editor, His Neighbour, And The Neighbour’s Twins

After reading this post at ZMKC, it seemed like a good idea to familiarise myself with the work of Honor Tracy. Here is a quick character sketch (of Desmond Marjoribanks, editor of Torch, “some new dynamic weekly that’s going to teach us all how to live”) from her novel A Number Of Things (1960):

“He was a man of about forty with a lofty brow made loftier by hastily retiring hair, and the wide thin mouth, the nutcracker nose and chin that often go with large progressive views: his light blue eyes positively glared with love of humanity, his nostrils expanded and deflated with enthusiasm like those of a passionate horse. He dearly loved resolutions, workers’ councils, committees, monster rallies, his children and his second wife. His first wife had thrown herself under a train.”

His downstairs neighbour, Orlando Figgis, has twin children named Summerskill and Hallucination. I suspect I am going to enjoy this book.

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