“I Capture The Castle” by Dodie Smith (1949)

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”

There are various books considered classics that have entirely passed me by. While there’s still not much of a chance of me finally sitting down with Dickens or Thackery any time soon, I am more willing to dip into the slightly more recent ones. Thus, I’ve only gone back seventy years this week to read Dodie Smith’s bestseller I Capture the Castle, about which I knew nothing aside from the opening line.

In a crumbling castle in the Suffolk countryside,...