Snobs: A Novel - Tapa dura

Julian Fellowes is just marvellous at celebrating the subtle slights that lie beneath aristocratic conversation. Reading his novel SNOBS is a guilty pleasure, owing not just to its bouncy plot, but also to the suspicion that Mr Fellowes knows the territory well. (John Walsh HARPERS AND QUEEN)

A delicious comedy of manners on the nuances of English social life, which raises laughter and an occasional wince of recognition. (Clare Colvin DAILY MAIL)

This provocative, titillating and seductive novel.......Julian Fellowes tells this anachronistic morality tale with such wit, verve, elegance and shadenfreude that it never loses momentum. (Andrew Barrow THE SPECTATOR)

'sparklingly rompish......... the world that Fellowes describes is an unchanging one: that of the landed aristocracy, whose wish since the beginning of time (or at least, since the beginning of titles), is to mix only with their own kind.... Fellowes is a delectable guide to its absurdities. (Penny Perrick SUNDAY TIMES)

'a good, fresh, read.... Fellowes has an excellent eye for detail..... Fellowes uses a light dusting of satire to help us enjoy our own snobbery without choking on chippiness. (Mary Wakefield DAILY TELEGRAPH)

deliciously waspish satire.... SNOBS is terrific entertainment, deepened by the sad ache of truth (Lucy Beresford LITERARY REVIEW)

'The Gosford Park writer's wry look at the English class system is an entertaining dabble in Debrett's. (Andrea Henry THE MIRROR)

a delicious contemporary comedy of manners - but it's the spiky Emma Woodhouse-style asides which make SNOBS so irresistible. (John Koski YOU MAGAZINE)

Fellowes's attractive, faintly cynical voice has overtones of Trollope, Waugh and Mitford.... this deft entertaining novel.... (Philip Hoare INDEPENDENT)

'A deliciously entertaining novel.' (STAR MAGAZINE)

SNOBS is the story of Edith Lavery, who earns a living answering the telephone in a Chelsea-based estate agents. She is the attractive only child of a comfortably-off accountant. When she attends Royal Ascot as a guest of friends, she meets bachelor Charles Broughton, who as Earl Broughton and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, is a gossip-column favourite. He proposes, she accepts - and here is the crux of the story: is she really in love with Charles or with his title and all that goes with it? The story is narrated by a journeyman character actor who comfortably moves among the upper and middle classes, while observing their foibles. Superbly observed, the story includes a fabulous character in Charles's mother, Lady Uckfield, known as 'Googie', who wants for her son the daughter of a peer from the old, familiar world she knows and trusts. She perceives Edith to be a young woman on the make, and is vindicated when Edith, now Countess Broughton, falls for a blonde good-looking actor. Fellowes resolves his story with twists and turns aplenty. This is a tale worthy of a contemporary Jane Austen with a dash of Evelyn Waugh.