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Advisory Ben: A Story
This book has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.
174 pages, Paperback
Published July 5, 2021
About the author
Edward Verrall Lucas
354 books16 followersNote: This is the Goodreads listing for E.V. Lucas.
He was a versatile and popular English writer. His nearly 100 books demonstrate great facility with style, and are generally acknowledged as humorous by contemporary readers and critics. Some of his essays about the sport cricket are still considered among the best instructional material.He is remembered best for his essays and books about London and travel abroad; these books continue through many editions. He is particularly noted for his biography of Charles Lamb.
He was born in Eltham, Kent into a Quaker family, and educated at Friends Public School in Saffron Walden. He worked first in a Brighton bookshop and then on a Sussex newspaper followed by The Globe; rising without university education to the Punch magazine 'table' in 1904. He became a prolific writer, providing extensive content for Punch and a column "A wanderer's notebook" for the Sunday Times.
He was responsible for A. A. Milne teaming up with E. H. Shepard for the Winnie-the-Pooh books. He wrote under pen names EVL, VVV, E. D. Ward, and FF for film criticism. Some of his early work was in collaboration with Charles Larcom Graves (1856–1944), another Punch writer.
Rupert Hart-Davis collected and published a collection of his essays on cricket, Cricket All His Life, which John Arlott called "the best written of all books on cricket.
From 1924 he was chairman of the London publishers Methuen and Co.. According to R. G. G. Price's A History of Punch, his polished and gentlemanly essayist's persona concealed:
a cynical clubman … very bitter about men and politics … [with] the finest pornographic library in London.
He was a versatile and popular English writer. His nearly 100 books demonstrate great facility with style, and are generally acknowledged as humorous by contemporary readers and critics. Some of his essays about the sport cricket are still considered among the best instructional material.He is remembered best for his essays and books about London and travel abroad; these books continue through many editions. He is particularly noted for his biography of Charles Lamb.
He was born in Eltham, Kent into a Quaker family, and educated at Friends Public School in Saffron Walden. He worked first in a Brighton bookshop and then on a Sussex newspaper followed by The Globe; rising without university education to the Punch magazine 'table' in 1904. He became a prolific writer, providing extensive content for Punch and a column "A wanderer's notebook" for the Sunday Times.
He was responsible for A. A. Milne teaming up with E. H. Shepard for the Winnie-the-Pooh books. He wrote under pen names EVL, VVV, E. D. Ward, and FF for film criticism. Some of his early work was in collaboration with Charles Larcom Graves (1856–1944), another Punch writer.
Rupert Hart-Davis collected and published a collection of his essays on cricket, Cricket All His Life, which John Arlott called "the best written of all books on cricket.
From 1924 he was chairman of the London publishers Methuen and Co.. According to R. G. G. Price's A History of Punch, his polished and gentlemanly essayist's persona concealed:
a cynical clubman … very bitter about men and politics … [with] the finest pornographic library in London.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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May 15, 2026wait I actually really enjoyed this. some CRAZY!!! out of pocket moments but a fun premise and enjoyable characters and concepts and relationships. Lucas obviously has certain preoccupations in his fiction so I’m reading more out of sheer curiosity. plus again some wild moments re: disability and assisted suicide (?!?!) and the world changing after the war in general. and French people. and marriages and personalities. Don’t know why the narrative voice was from an outside first person source?? completely irrelevant in general bc it was mostly just Ben herself in third person. odd!!
I wassss kind of hoping that Ben would stay unwed but I see no respite (even in the prev book I read everyone wound up, even cynical Hazel). However, for ONCE IN MY LIFE, the one I was hoping for in the quote unquote love triangle (??) came out victorious. Very underdeveloped but I liked him so much. also deeply relatable: “Neglecting work is so agreeable.”
I wassss kind of hoping that Ben would stay unwed but I see no respite (even in the prev book I read everyone wound up, even cynical Hazel). However, for ONCE IN MY LIFE, the one I was hoping for in the quote unquote love triangle (??) came out victorious. Very underdeveloped but I liked him so much. also deeply relatable: “Neglecting work is so agreeable.”
October 1, 2024
A fun, quick read with a relatively original premise. A few years after WWI, Miss Staveley's father, a very difficult to please person, has remarried, and Ben (as Miss Staveley is known) has decided it is the perfect time to leave home and get a job. She gets the inspiration to start an advice/problem solving agency, and establishes it on top of a new bookstore managed by two young war veterans.
The main interest of the novel is the different people and situations that come to Ben's agency for help, and the solutions they get. There's a little romance -because it's very little developed- but it is neither cloying nor particularly forced, and it is definitely helped along by how likeable the characters are.
The main interest of the novel is the different people and situations that come to Ben's agency for help, and the solutions they get. There's a little romance -because it's very little developed- but it is neither cloying nor particularly forced, and it is definitely helped along by how likeable the characters are.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews