Fun Times

Shakespeare and Milton: unsurpassable in the English canon. Milton’s mature poetry stands for perfection, Shakespeare’s for a wholeness of vision verging on the truly religious. Their examples cannot be rivalled, only followed. Dickens chose to follow Shakespeare. And now D. J. Taylor trails Dickens.

Derby Day
is a story about—wait for it—the Derby. A spectacular race-horse by the name of Tiberius has fallen into the hands of Mr Davenant who lives quietly in Lincolnshire. Soon he is not living quite so quietly. A brash young man from London begins to take a professional interest in Mr Davenant’s debts – and an even keener interest in his horse.

Safebreakers, disgraced military men, the cream (or the scum) of the sporting gentlemen of London, and an implacable police commander are gradually drawn into a series of intrigues which inevitably converge on the day of the great race itself. In the course of these adventures we slip from taking tea in the drawing rooms of Belgrave Square to dodging laundry bills in the rookeries of the City; we rove across the foggy flats of Lincolnshire, and we make ourselves at home in the suburban front parlours of Richmond.