Lord Dismiss Us
It’s an interesting discussion which actually took place on Radio 4’s A Good Read on reaction to re-reading an old favourite.
With this in mind, I recently read for the third time Lord Dismiss Us by Michael Campbell.
The novel, which I suspect is strongly biographical, is set in Weatherhill a minor public school and the love affair between two boys, the more senior Carleton, and Nicky Allen.
The author is the brother of Patrick Campbell an Irish aristocrat and wit who appeared regularly in the BBC parlour game Call My Bluff.
It’s an excellent depiction of a public school in I guess the sixties – two masters who have been there for years nicknamed the Pedant and the Doctor, the games master that elopes with the nurse, the brilliant but unhappy English teacher Eric Ashley confronting his demons and a new headmaster on a mission both to modernise the school and root out what he considers to be the evil of homosexuality.
Homosexuality is the theme of the novel and to this extent Campbell predates modern gay writers like Alan Hollinghurst and Sara Waters.
At the third reading I noted the lack of plot.
The novel moves in set pieces – the school day, the drama rehearsal, the concert, the cricket match and – whilst things happen like the growing but doomed relationship between Carleton and Allen – there is no narrational arc.
Thus it becomes a more difficult read.
Nonetheless it remains the best description of public school life I have read.
