As the judges of a literary prize chip away at the author list, someone else is chipping away at them…. When the chairperson of the prestigious Knapper-Warburton Literary Prize dies in suspicious circumstances, Robert Amiss (the [...] Read More →

“Robert Amiss is persuaded by his friend Detective Sergeant Pooley of the CID to take a job as a waiter in featherstonehaugh’s (pronounced Fanshaw’s), a gentlemen’s club in St James’, London. The club secretary has allegedly [...] Read More →

Battered to death with a piece of abstract sculpture titled Reconciliation, Whitehall departmental head Sir Nicholas Clark is described as a fine and respected public servant cut off in his prime. Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Jim Milton [...] Read More →

Lady (Jack) Troutbeck is missing.  So too, is Sir Henry Fortune, celebrity curator, and his  partner in love and money, louche art dealer Jason Pringle.  Panic begins in the London art world when no one can [...] Read More →

St. Martha’s College, Cambridge, had been staggering along on a shoestring for decades. Then alumna Alice Toon leaves her old school a huge fortune. The dons immediately fall to fighting over the spoils. The Virgins, led [...] Read More →

For many years Westonbury Cathedral has been dominated by a clique of High Church gays, so when Norman Cooper, an austere, intolerant, happy-clappy evangelist, is appointed dean, there is shock, outrage and fear. David Elworthy, the [...] Read More →

Academia (n.): a profession filled with bad food, knee-jerk liberalism, and murder… Being a member of the House of Lords and Mistress of St Martha’s College in Cambridge might seem enough to keep anyone busy, but [...] Read More →

Robert Amiss, lapsed civil servant, is approached by Lord Papworth, owner of the Wrangler, to step in as business manager for the august journal and do something about its steady drain on his lordship’s finances. The [...] Read More →

The House of Lords will never be the same…. Disinclined to watch her language or moderate her manners, “Jack” Troutbeck—assisted by her old friend Robert Amiss—plots vigorously with others to scupper an anti-hunting bill of which [...] Read More →

Foolishly, the British and Irish governments have chosen the tactless and impatient Baroness Troutbeck to chair a conference on Anglo-Irish cultural sensitivities. She instantly press-gangs Robert Amiss, her young friend and reluctant accomplice, into becoming conference [...] Read More →

Can anyone British teach English as a foreign language? It’s murder….  

Life in a dismal bureaucratic cul-de-sac is not what Robert Amiss expects when the British civil service lends him for a year to the British Conservation Corporation. In fact, he finds himself condemned to a non-job [...] Read More →