Category: Dornford Yates

Antony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda

Antony Hope's invention* of the cardboard kingdom in The Prisoner of Zenda is the subject of this week's Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up. Hope was a respectable Victorian London lawyer, but he had a secret passion for the romantic and dramatic, and wrote many novels. His most famous is The Prisoner of Zenda, from … Continue reading Antony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda →

Fast cars and the open road: Reading speed in Dornford Yates

Brief toot on my academic trumpet here: I had another article published, on how the intensely middlebrow and thriller / comedy novelist Dornford Yates used techniques and ideas from avant garde thinking when writing about fast cars, car chases, driving at speed, and the thrill of speed on the open road (clue: it's all from Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto). You … Continue reading Fast cars and the open road: Reading speed in Dornford Yates →

Rampaging in the Pyrenees: Dornford Yates’s Adèle and Co.

Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is Y, and today’s author’s name really begins with M, but his pen-name, by which he was made famous from the 1920s, begins with Y. Dornford Yates was the pseudonym of Cecil William Mercer, and he was famous for two kinds of fiction. The first … Continue reading Rampaging in the Pyrenees: Dornford Yates’s Adèle and Co. →

Terror of the tyrannical wife, in Dornford Yates’s This Publican

For the full horror of an evil woman using class and sex warfare you might consider trying Dornford Yates’s magnificently toe-curling novel, This Publican, from 1938, which I podcasted about a few years ago. Its villain Rowena is the most loathsome woman character I’ve ever read, but it is faintly possible that she could be read differently … Continue reading Terror of the tyrannical wife, in Dornford Yates’s This Publican →

Running through the south of France with John Welcome and Run for Cover (1958)

This podcast was written for a miniseries on Thrillers for Gentlemen, looking at the kind of thriller or spy novel that was masculine without being brutal, and that was written about men of a certain generation who understood the value of the gentleman’s club, and worked within its rules. This time, I was exploring a … Continue reading Running through the south of France with John Welcome and Run for Cover (1958) →

Was James Bond a gentleman?

This podcast was written for the miniseries on Thrillers for Gentlemen. I was looking at the kind of thriller or spy novel that was masculine without being brutal, and that was written about men of a certain generation who understood the value of the gentleman’s club, and worked within its rules. These thrillers were tough, … Continue reading Was James Bond a gentleman? →