Derby Day - Hardcover

Taylor, D J

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701183586 ISBN 13: 9780701183585

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2011

Synopsis

As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all England is heading for Epsom Downs - high life and low life, society beauties and Whitechapel street girls, bookmakers and gypsies, hawkers and acrobats, punters and thieves. Whole families stream along the Surrey back-roads, towards the greatest race of the year. Hopes are high, nerves are taut, hats are tossed in the air - this is Derby Day.

For months people have been waiting and plotting for this day. Even in dark November, when the wind whistles through the foggy London courts, the alehouses and gentlemen's clubs echo to the sound of disputed odds. In Belgrave Square old Mr Gresham is baffled by his tigerish daughter Rebecca, whose intentions he cannot fathom. In the clubs of St James's rakish Mr Happerton plays billiards with his crony Captain Raff, while in darkest Lincolnshire sad Mr Davenant broods over his financial embarrassments and waits for his daughter's new governess. Across the channel the veteran burglar Mr Pardew is packing his bags to return, to the consternation of the stalwart detective Captain McTurk. Everywhere money jingles and plans are laid. Uniting them all is the champion horse Tiberius, on whose performance half a dozen destinies depend.

In this rich and exuberant novel, rife with the idioms of Victorian England, the mysteries pile high, propelling us towards the day of the great race, and we wait with bated breath as the story gallops to a finish that no one expects.

About this title

Review:

"Derby Day is a triumphant success...in this unputdownable Victorian romp [Taylor] enjoyable proves himself to be one of the finest of our 21st-century novelists" (Financial Times)

"Rich and gorgeous as a plum cake, this is absorbing entertainment indeed" (Kate Saunders Times)

"Taylor, as you would expect of such an accomplished novelist and biographer, has immersed himself in the details of the early 1860s. The novel is richly redolent of the novels of Wilkie Collins, Dickens and Thackeray. The characters who plot and squirm throughout the course of Derby Day are fully rounded and memorably drawn and the atmosphere is palpable. In fact here is an intelligent novel which is also a genuine page-turner. Truly a terrific read" (Daily Express)

"Derby Day is pitch-perfect... It's enormous fun and meticulously researched and conceived" (Guardian)

"Taylor has written an exceptionally clever pastiche nineteeth-century novel with a richness of character that almost matches his models of Dickens and Thackeray" (Sunday Times)

Book Description:

A gripping novel of romance and rivalry, gambling and greed, from acclaimed novelist and biographer D.J. Taylor

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0701183586
• ISBN 13: 9780701183585
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416