The Affairs Of Men

I'm making little progress in Trollope's The Prime Minister, but I don't think either Trollope or myself is much to blame for this. Indeed, given the circumstances of my life lately I'm pleased to be making any progress at all.

The pity is that if I weren't so busy I know that the early chapters would have had me hooked enough to read at high speed. Despite the somewhat equivocal reputation of the novel in the canon I had a feeling I would find it more than palatable. I seem to remember reading somewhere - I think it's in C.P. Snow's rather fine book about those whom he terms realist writers - that Tolstoy regarded The Prime Minister as a major novel and, despite the great Russian's critical dottiness, when he says something like this about a novel of his own period you've got to sit up and take notice.

I think Tolstoy was impressed with the panoramic quality of the writing, the sense that Trollope really knows and understands the workings of the upper reaches of British society, and is able to make fine and telling discriminations within that understanding. How many writers write well about politics in the practical day-to-day sense and convince you that they know what they are talking about? It's a very short list, and Trollope is right there at, or near, the top.