A Watch in the Night

The Lampitt Chronicles #5

by A.N. Wilson

While watching television, Julian Ramsay, biographer of the literary Lampitt dynasty, recalls a single night during which he journeys from London's high society to its dark underworld, revisits memories of old loves, and unravels the truth about two violent deaths.

Genres: Fiction

217 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Andrew Norman Wilson is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views. He is an occasional columnist for the Daily Mail and former columnist for the London Evening Standard, and has been an occasional contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Observer.

Reviews

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved this passage about the narrator's love of detective novels:

" ... Most nights close for me at two a.m., with a few more murders solved. (I don't like the ones in which there is no solution.) Well, perhaps the Dame is right, and I should be better employed reading all those great books by Dante or Balzac or Cicero that I've never got round to, but the truth is that I never will; my reading habits are just that - habits. Books are now a narcotic for me, not vehicles for self-improvement ..."

Books can sometimes offer up the most personal truths.

[Timothy Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed re-reading this final volume ( immediately after its predecessor, Hearing Voices ) of The Lampitt papers sequence of novels, over 25 years after I first read them, although they're not as good as the first 3. i'd love to see them televised but they're probably a bit too niche. A good story of (mostly ) London literary life, well-written. Can there be a heterosexual novelist as good as describing gay life and characters as Wilson ? He is obsessed with the use of the inverted comma throughout this and others of his novels. A minor point but I think it's overdone at times.

[Graham Robertson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing.