The conscience of the rich.
Contributors: Cover illustration by George Him
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1961
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 333
First sentence: Chapter I
CONFIDENCES ON A SUMMER EVENING
It was a summer afternoon, the last day of the Bar final examinations. The doors had just swung open; I walked to my place as fast as I could without breaking into a run. For an instant I was touched again by the odour of the old Hall, blended from wooden panels, floor polish, and the after-smell of food; it was as musty as a boarding house, and yet the smell, during those days, became as powerful in making one's heart lift up and sink as that of the sea itself.
As I stared at the question-paper, I went through an initial moment in which the words, even the rubric 'Candidates are required to answer ...' appeared glaring but utterly unfamiliar. At the beginning of each examination I was possessed in this way: as though by a magnified version of one of those amnesias in which a single word - for example take - looks as though we have never seen it before, and in which we have to reassure ourselves, staring at the word, that it occurs in the language and that we have used it, spelt exactly in that fashion, every day of our lives.
Then, all of a sudden, the strangeness vanished. I was reading, deciding, watching myself begin to write. The afternoon became a fervent, flushed, pulsing, and exuberant time. This I could do; I was immersed in a craftsman's pleasure. In the middle of the excitement I was at home.
Towards the end of the afternoon, the sunlight fell in a swathe across the room, picking out the motes like the beam from a cinema projector. I was cramped, tired, and the sweat was running down my temples; my hand shook as I stopped writing.
In that moment, I noticed Charles March sitting a little farther up the hall, across the gangway. His fair hair, just...
Description: In this novel of conflict, C. P. Snow explores the world of the great Anglo-Jewish banking families between the two World Wars.
Charles March is the heir to one of these families and is beginning to make a name for himself at the Bar. But when he realizes that he wishes to change his way of life and do something more concretely useful, he is forced into a quarrel with his father, and through him, with his family and his Jewishness.
Notes: Originally published (B58-4802), Macmillan, 1958.
'Vivid, compact, and intellectually satisfying'
- John Connell in the Evening News
'Hypnotic readability' - Daily Mail
'A brilliant achievement'
- Walter Allen on the B.B.C.