What do you think?
Rate this book
Position at Noon
Position at
- GenresNovels
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1958
About the author
Eric Linklater
170 books25 followersEric Robert Russell Linklater was a Welsh-born Scottish writer of novels and short stories, military history, and travel books. For The Wind on the Moon, a children's fantasy novel, he won the 1944 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for the year's best children's book by a British subject.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 29, 2018
Continuing my slow, unsystematic trawl through forgotten authors I have come back to Eric Linklater in a nice 1964 Penguin edition of ‘Position at Noon’.
Well, this was a yarn, a romp, a fabulous fictional family history, told by the absurdly named Edward Gratiano Vanbrugh, down on his luck as an antique dealer in a desultory middle class town called Melbury. There he dwells with his desultory middle class wife in a rundown flat above the shop opposite the Buttermere Family Hotel where Edna the barmaid offers him consolation more appealing than that supplied by his wife and parents-in-law. Facing insolvency with little more than a couple of very good fake Tang Dynasty horses in the window, he reflects on the family from which he is descended, and that sets in motion a series of stories, each one set a generation earlier than the previous until he reaches the fons et origo of his line, Moses Vanbrugh, 1st Baron Storleyford, a foundling discovered in a basket in Lady Lowestoft’s coach with nothing more than a blanket and a copy of ‘The Confederacy’ by John Vanbrugh.
This bizarre set of circumstances gives you a taste of the comic tone of this novel, and I felt as I lapped it up that Linklater was having a high old time. ‘This,’ it seemed to say, ‘ is an entertainment, and I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it.’ Although in some ways it is a candidate for trial under a list of ‘pet peeves’ that I compiled from an Open Book programme on Radio 4, specifically ostentatious historical research and complicated family trees, Linklater wears his historical learning lightly and includes two family trees with a tongue-in-cheek comment: “Because a tale of relationships always seems more complicated than it is, I have added this diagram of those branches of my family tree of which I have been writing.”
This over-precise statement with its ironically precious ‘of which’ – a grammatical correctness knowingly at odds with the stories of folly, recklessness and bad luck that he is telling, I found endeared me to the desultorily lusty early middle-aged narrator. I was elated, frankly, in the last chapter when our anti-hero-narrator takes a long-distance punt on the generosity and gullibility of an American couple who enter ‘A.C.Birtwhistle Antiques’. His excitement is palpable in the inflated style of his final paragraphs: “[Moses Vanbrugh]... from the servants’ hall drove a road to the peerage – and so will I. As he did, so in my turn I venture. He into the aristocracy of England, I into the new aristocracy of Texas. And as he conquered, so shall I. I needed, as he did, a new dimension for his wings, And I shall find it... My heart is on fire.”
Of course, one suspects he hasn’t a hope and that he is one of life’s losers. Nevertheless, it would be churlish not to recognise and sympathise with such hopefulness and energy derived from a sudden turn of fate and a desperate salesman’s well-told lie!
A very enjoyable journey through the First World War, British India, a hapless Victorian gentleman of leisure at odds with his milieu, a sailor-cum-stagecoach driver, The Person from Porlock (a specially funny episode for those who are sceptical about Wordsworth and Coleridge), and the American War of Independence.
And it gave me the words snow (a small warship), vail, nonage, continuations (trousers), shikar, dacoity and sundry others. A very happy read.
Well, this was a yarn, a romp, a fabulous fictional family history, told by the absurdly named Edward Gratiano Vanbrugh, down on his luck as an antique dealer in a desultory middle class town called Melbury. There he dwells with his desultory middle class wife in a rundown flat above the shop opposite the Buttermere Family Hotel where Edna the barmaid offers him consolation more appealing than that supplied by his wife and parents-in-law. Facing insolvency with little more than a couple of very good fake Tang Dynasty horses in the window, he reflects on the family from which he is descended, and that sets in motion a series of stories, each one set a generation earlier than the previous until he reaches the fons et origo of his line, Moses Vanbrugh, 1st Baron Storleyford, a foundling discovered in a basket in Lady Lowestoft’s coach with nothing more than a blanket and a copy of ‘The Confederacy’ by John Vanbrugh.
This bizarre set of circumstances gives you a taste of the comic tone of this novel, and I felt as I lapped it up that Linklater was having a high old time. ‘This,’ it seemed to say, ‘ is an entertainment, and I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it.’ Although in some ways it is a candidate for trial under a list of ‘pet peeves’ that I compiled from an Open Book programme on Radio 4, specifically ostentatious historical research and complicated family trees, Linklater wears his historical learning lightly and includes two family trees with a tongue-in-cheek comment: “Because a tale of relationships always seems more complicated than it is, I have added this diagram of those branches of my family tree of which I have been writing.”
This over-precise statement with its ironically precious ‘of which’ – a grammatical correctness knowingly at odds with the stories of folly, recklessness and bad luck that he is telling, I found endeared me to the desultorily lusty early middle-aged narrator. I was elated, frankly, in the last chapter when our anti-hero-narrator takes a long-distance punt on the generosity and gullibility of an American couple who enter ‘A.C.Birtwhistle Antiques’. His excitement is palpable in the inflated style of his final paragraphs: “[Moses Vanbrugh]... from the servants’ hall drove a road to the peerage – and so will I. As he did, so in my turn I venture. He into the aristocracy of England, I into the new aristocracy of Texas. And as he conquered, so shall I. I needed, as he did, a new dimension for his wings, And I shall find it... My heart is on fire.”
Of course, one suspects he hasn’t a hope and that he is one of life’s losers. Nevertheless, it would be churlish not to recognise and sympathise with such hopefulness and energy derived from a sudden turn of fate and a desperate salesman’s well-told lie!
A very enjoyable journey through the First World War, British India, a hapless Victorian gentleman of leisure at odds with his milieu, a sailor-cum-stagecoach driver, The Person from Porlock (a specially funny episode for those who are sceptical about Wordsworth and Coleridge), and the American War of Independence.
And it gave me the words snow (a small warship), vail, nonage, continuations (trousers), shikar, dacoity and sundry others. A very happy read.
January 4, 2019
A historical romp working backwards through the family tree of the wholly dislikeable Edward Gratiano Vanbrugh. I enjoyed the separate stories and the irony when each generation was quick to pin his own faults on his father. The mix up in the family tree diagrams with names irritated though: it was Priscilla Dabney, not Letitia. Perhaps this was meant as another pointer at the complete unreliability of the revolting narrator. Ultimately an enjoyable read - I felt very sorry for the generations of long suffering women!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews