London: Faber and Faber, 1965
A good way of keeping up with the twentieth century is to start a university of your own. This is the comedy of one man’s attempt to see that his town did just that. Or is it so simple?
The idea does not seem to be his in the first place and when the campaign is on the point of success he tries to withdraw for no good reason. There was, certainly, the scandal about the young woman who taught in one of the schools he administered. His resignation from the Promotion Committee was, moreover, seen to follow a duel with cavalry swords in which he nearly decapitated the man who had made off with his wife.
But this was trivial to Whitehall and the University Grants Committee, not affecting one way of another their decision whether the new university went to this particular locality or somewhere at the other end of the country. Clearly, his civic ambition sprang from some profounder level. It was so profound that one leading citizen urged him to emigrate…
“P.H. Newby is the most interesting and intellectually distinguished English writer to have come into view since the end of the Second World War.”
