It's been a long time since I bought any books, and it looks like it may be even longer before I do so again. I seem to be finding so much on my shelves that I consider myself as not having done justice to. And I've also developed an impulse to read stuff that catches my eye on the shelves of the library at work.
This latter phenomenon accounts for my post-Trollope choice of novel. Quite by chance I happened to spot four rather battered old tomes by Anthony Price the other day, and they happened to be the four earliest volumes in his highly entertaining series centring on Dr David Audley, a sort of super-cerebral member of British Intelligence with a taste for the arcane corners of history. Although I became a big fan of the series a few years back, I never actually read the early stuff, probably because my entry point was Our Man In Camelot, which was number five.
Anyway, I'm now well into the first of them all, The Labyrinth Makers, and it isn't letting me down. The great thing about Price is that he doesn't really take any of it too seriously, but there's enough that connects with the grimmer side of life to keep the whole shebang reasonably grounded. Oh, and the other great thing is the beguiling sense of just how completely absorbing the past is.
Never underestimate the sense in which a good novel functions as a way of escaping the narrow concerns of our little worlds - and Price offers a particularly fruitful world to escape to.
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