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The Three Friends
“Meet the three friends and form your own opinion about these traveling salesmen three gentlemen of the road who have affectionately welcomed into thousands of English homes and stayed to cause endless chuckles. “ DJ excerpt.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1936
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About the author
Norman Collins
26 books26 followersNorman Collins born 3 October 1907, died 1982, was a British writer, and later a radio and television executive, who became one of the major figures behind the establishment of the Independent Television (ITV) network in the UK. This was the first organisation to break the BBC’s broadcasting monopoly when it began transmitting in 1955.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 21, 2024
I was in a charity shop, and needed a second book to go with The Fountainhead to qualify for their two books for a pound offer. I spotted three or four titles by Norman Collins. I’d heard of him due to the film version of his best-known novel, London Belongs to Me, but never read anything. I picked one more or less at random, based on it being a nice hardback, and the few pages I flicked through appealing to me. Well: the serendipity and happenstance of charity shops can be a wonderful thing: I absolutely loved this book.
First published in 1935, the three friends are commercial travellers, meek and apprehensive Albert Birdie, boisterous and go-ahead Alfred Clagg, and Captain Percy Knott, who has clung onto his temporary rank from the Great War to offset his essentially ne’er-do-well nature. Reading up on Norman Collins, I found that he was quite often described as Dickensian, and I can see why: his large cast of characters are varied and alive. He obviously likes and enjoys people. He is genial and congenial. Of course, he isn’t a genius at the level of Dickens, but if he doesn’t quite have his energy (who does?), then nor does he have his piety or sentimentality.
From the first few chapters, I assumed this would be a comic novel (the subject of an oil painting ‘was a bearded, benevolent-looking man with bright spectacles, rather like a happy Ibsen,’ which made me laugh), but that is not the right term: Collins is a kind of humorous realist. He is not afraid to be bleak, but mostly, to quote his estimation of a minor character: ‘he was one of those… men who believe that there is a lot of fun to be found in life if only you keep your eyes open.’ It also struck me as relatively rare in an English novel of this period for almost everyone in it to be working or lower middle class, and for them not to be caricatured or condescended to. His sensitivity to detail, environmental and human, is just outstanding: I felt he knew the world he was writing about inside out. Mr Birdie, on a rare weekend off from travelling, is pottering about the garden when his wife reminds him to put his coat on:
The words roused Mr Birdie. They reminded him that he was home again. They were part of that complicated mechanism of solicitude and control which comprises marriage. On the whole he rather liked it. It was precisely because Mrs Birdie did mind about his catching cold that he had wanted to get back to her.
‘The complicated mechanism of solicitude and control which comprises marriage’ – what a phrase! Both simple and profound. Even before I’d finished this novel, I went back to the charity shop and snapped up their other Norman Collins books.
First published in 1935, the three friends are commercial travellers, meek and apprehensive Albert Birdie, boisterous and go-ahead Alfred Clagg, and Captain Percy Knott, who has clung onto his temporary rank from the Great War to offset his essentially ne’er-do-well nature. Reading up on Norman Collins, I found that he was quite often described as Dickensian, and I can see why: his large cast of characters are varied and alive. He obviously likes and enjoys people. He is genial and congenial. Of course, he isn’t a genius at the level of Dickens, but if he doesn’t quite have his energy (who does?), then nor does he have his piety or sentimentality.
From the first few chapters, I assumed this would be a comic novel (the subject of an oil painting ‘was a bearded, benevolent-looking man with bright spectacles, rather like a happy Ibsen,’ which made me laugh), but that is not the right term: Collins is a kind of humorous realist. He is not afraid to be bleak, but mostly, to quote his estimation of a minor character: ‘he was one of those… men who believe that there is a lot of fun to be found in life if only you keep your eyes open.’ It also struck me as relatively rare in an English novel of this period for almost everyone in it to be working or lower middle class, and for them not to be caricatured or condescended to. His sensitivity to detail, environmental and human, is just outstanding: I felt he knew the world he was writing about inside out. Mr Birdie, on a rare weekend off from travelling, is pottering about the garden when his wife reminds him to put his coat on:
The words roused Mr Birdie. They reminded him that he was home again. They were part of that complicated mechanism of solicitude and control which comprises marriage. On the whole he rather liked it. It was precisely because Mrs Birdie did mind about his catching cold that he had wanted to get back to her.
‘The complicated mechanism of solicitude and control which comprises marriage’ – what a phrase! Both simple and profound. Even before I’d finished this novel, I went back to the charity shop and snapped up their other Norman Collins books.
Displaying 1 of 1 review