High Table

by Joanna Cannan

In the years leading up to the First World War, Theodore Fletcher achieves a lifetime's ambition and is elected to the Wardenship of St Mary's College. But it isn't long before he discovers that he was a compromise candidate and, in reality, is despised by his fellows. He begins to see his life as an uneventful and trivial succession of failures. What he doesn't suspect is that this is soon to change in a most alarming and regrettable way.

'A plot of extraordinary delicacy, pathos, and irony. It is rare indeed to find a tale, so ruthless in its probing of shame and grief, at the same time so sure in its grasp of significance and beauty.' Observer

'A novel of uncommon qualities. Miss Cannan has sympathy and insight, she can hit hard, she can be witty, she has a fine gift of phrase.' Spectator

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Born in 1898, Joanna Cannan was the youngest daughter of Oxford don Charles Cannan, and his wife Mary Wedderburn. Part of a family of authors, Joanna Cannan was cousin to novelist and playwright Gilbert Cannan, sister to poet May Wedderburn Cannan, mother to fellow pony-book authors Josephine Pullein-Thompson, Diana Pullein-Thompson and Christine Pullein-Thompson, as well as to screenwriter and playwright Denis Cannan, and grandmother to cookbook author Charlotte Popescu.

Cannan worked as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse during WWI, meeting her her future husband, Captain Harold J. "Cappy" Pullein-Thompson, in Oxford, during the course of that work. They were married in 1918, and Cannan (who never published under her married name) became the primary breadwinner for the family, after he was severely injured during the war, publishing approximately one book per year. Most of her pony books for children were written before and during WWII, at which point she began turning to detective novels for adults. Cannan suffered from ill health in the 1950s, and eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died in 1961.

Reviews

[Felicity · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a surprise discovery in the Loros shop in Leicester (always a good source...). The first time I heard of Joanna Cannan was through Persephone's reprint of Princes in the Land, and I am not sure whether this is still in print- it's a 1987 reprint of a 1931 novel. Joanna Cannan was the daughter of an Oxford don who wrote 38 books - born 1896, died 1961. She really deserves to be better known now - this is a touching and sympathetic book.
At its heart is the wizened, shrivelled, donnish figure of Theodore Fletcher, crippled from boyhood by shyness. The novel opens with a moving (albeit lightly written and funny) image of him as a boy, the rector's son, constantly falling over his own feet, chosen last for sports, uncomfortable and timid. He cannot bring himself to be lively company; he can't bear to converse with people; he shuts himself into his scholarly Oxford life - with one exception, on a hot summer's night in his student days, which amazes him more than anyone: '... life wasn't now, as it had been, a quiet obvious affair of straight way and primrose path, but a furious, treacherous chaos to which you woke one morning and found that a seducer of village maidens wasn't a wicked, lustful man with flashing eyes and black whiskers and a London tailor... but yourself'. The story unfolds the consequences of his decisions across his life, against a backdrop of Oxford and of a world changing through the years 1914-1918: it's a very moving reflection on regret and growing older, on doubts and uncertainty. It deserves to come out of obscurity!

[Virginia Rounding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyable. Funny, wise and sad, all at once.

[JimZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that I had no intention of reading in one sitting. However with 60 pages to go, there was no turning back. 🙂 An extraordinary story and it held me in its grip both by the story line but also accompanied by some wonderful prose. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. 🙂 It reminded me somewhat of ‘Stoner’ by John Williams. Both main characters were academicians. Both were not at all that much liked among their academic colleagues. There was a woman involved in the stories that affected their lives, probably not for the better. There were differences of course between the two books but I just wanted to say ‘Stoner’ was running through my head at times while I was reading “High Table.”

This is a book I had previously never heard of. I only became aware of it because I liked her book, ‘Princes in the Land’ which was re-issued by Persephone Books. So I was curious about her and what else she wrote. I ordered this book.

The story takes place in England, and the time period is from around 1885-1918. The story begins when Theodore is around 7 years old...he is a nerd who other boys generally make fun of and don’t want him on their side in sports because he sucks. So bespectacled Theodore hides in his books. His parents don’t love each other. Several years go by, and he attends Oxford University, and there, he does quite well. However, he makes no friends...he is socially inept...people merely put up with him. He meets a young woman back home, Hester, who is nerdy like him and they have sex just once. She comes to him and tells him she is pregnant. He wails and says he is at Oxford and that he has to finish his schooling ... he offers no solace or support to Hester. He goes back to Oxford and forgets about her for many years. He gets a fellowship at Oxford, and I guess back in those days it meant you could stay there and teach and be one of the faculty. Time goes by while he is on the faculty at Oxford and there is an election amongst his peers and they, because they are split between Person A and Person B, end up voting for Theodore to become Warden of St. Mary’s College (a college within Oxford). So he’s a big shot and he feels pretty good about himself all of a sudden, but then finds out the only reason a majority of the faculty voted for him was because he was ‘the lesser of two evils’ (he was not voted for because of merit). So that depresses him...his esteem level throughout the book has been low, and this about sinks him. He becomes somewhat withdrawn. Then World War One erupts and soldiers are housed there temporarily. He thinks that one of the soldiers, Lenny, is his son because he finds out that Hester is his mother and he, Lenny, is the eldest son of hers. Lenny is a nice chap and ends up getting engaged and then married during his short stay at Oxford. He ends up dying back on the battlefield, and when Hester comes to thank Theodore for giving her son Lenny a generous monetary gift as a wedding present (so he and his new bride could have a wonderful two-week honeymoon), she eventually reveals to him that she wasn’t pregnant after all so many years ago (although when she originally told Theodore she was, she truly believed she was). She told him that she did not reveal to him that she wasn’t pregnant when she eventually found this out because of the cowardly and uncaring way he treated her when she had originally told him that she was pregnant. And the story basically ends there. Theodore for much of his life thought he was a loser...but was temporarily buoyed up by thinking that he had a son and that he was indeed a father of a very respectable and nice son...and then he finds out that Lenny was not his son. 😕

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