You must learn to speak like someone who is going to have these things and be considerate to people less fortunate than you, particularly women.

When you grow up all this house and lots of other things besides will belong to you. Poor people use certain expressions which gentlemen do not. And secondly because you were using a word which people of your age and class do not use. Think of all the things she does for you every day.” It was very wrong of you to call nanny a silly old tart. They have a young son, John, whom they love, although it is really Ben, the farm hand, who looks after him, causing some consternation when words like “silly old tart” come into John’s vocabulary. His marriage to Brenda is companionable and humorous.

And it will be the rich old-school types like Tony Last who don’t see the writing on the wall, that the rules of the game have changed, and that he will be the fall guy. When an entire culture is rotten, then someone must pay. So why does Life deal him such a cruel deck? Why does he end up in the jungles of Brazil, far from civilization, feverish, being forced to read the entire works of Charles Dickens to an insane old farmer who holds him prisoner? How on earth does this happen to a man so … blameless? So harmless? He loves the ritual of walking to church and then talking with the Vicar afterwards. He loves his massive house, even though it’s ugly and uncomfortable. All he wants to do is live the life of a country squire, the life his father lived, his grandfather, and so on, puttering about the massive garden, going to church, and sitting across from his wife Brenda as they read the Sunday papers.

A handful of dust book