By the Grand Canal takes place, not wholly unexpectedly, in the Venice of the immediately post-Great War era. To this idyllic if decaying refuge comes dapper Sir Hugh Thurne, a fortysomething career diplomat, bruised by the turmoil of the past four years (in particular the death of his fast friend Philip Mancroft) but keen to resume the even tenor of his Venetian existence from the vantage point of Ca’ Zante, an agreeable rented house beyond the Accademia.
Sir Hugh — worldly-wise and faintly world-weary — turns out to have two chief interests. The first, a taste for wryly reflective conversation, is immediately satisfied by a chat with his old friend Giacomo Venier on the shaky prospects for peace (‘Of course, Giacomo, we know that the Kaiser’s top brass have only caved in because they’ve been admirably frightened by the insurrections and mutinies that, with any luck, are bringing their regime down.’)
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