It’s hard to see what’s different except that the second trilogy is a better version of the first. In the former, the neighbours don’t even get names – they’re all Mrs W and Mrs X. The neighbours and staff are half-portraits, compared to Oldfield (gardener) and Miss Emily (officious neighbour) in the latter trilogy. The jokes hit home, but aren’t developed with the same glee. While Nichols is still light-hearted in Down the Garden Path, he has yet (to my mind) to develop the easy hilarity of his later books. Based on Down the Garden Path (1932), they cover similar ground – moving to a new house developing the garden getting entangled with neighbours good and bad. Fast forward to the 1950s, and he wrote three about Merry Hall – which I had always assumed was a pun on ‘merry Hell’, but am no longer sure. For those not yet in the know – in the 1930s, Nichols wrote three books about his house, Allways, and its garden. I asked on Twitter a while ago, and those who replied agreed with my preference for the Merry Hall trilogy over the Allways trilogy (albeit I still have two to go). I don’t know how popular this opinion is. But Down the Garden Path remains entertaining – if overshadowed by his later work. Would it have become the YoBN (yes) if this had been my first experience with him? Possibly not. This has been the Year of Beverley Nichols chez moi, but this is my first venture with him that hasn’t proved quite as runaway a success as the others. I suppose it was inevitable, if sad, that the shine would have to come off eventually.
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