The Old Country, By Sam North
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.What is it with the English aristocracy? There are far more deserving objects for our compassion, yet Sam North's masterly creation, Lord Woodford – a self-centred, bristle-moustached, scarlet-faced, alcoholic aristo who's never done a day's work in his life – milks the reader's sense of pathos until it hurts. And makes you laugh at the same time.
Hopeless, hapless and helpless, at 68 Lord Woodford has lost all his money and his ancestral home, and lives in a barn; he's divorced from his third wife, and the ashes of his mother, who died falling out of a Land Rover, have farcically ended up inside a chocolate cake which Lord Woodford pledges to bury on the old estate where he is now a trespasser. Then the novel moves backwards through time, showing us a wedding, a birth and a conception. By the end, one knows Lord Woodford and his family inside out, and his personal struggles and failure are universalised.
Few novelists write about childhood and old age with equal facility, but Sam North does, and his book also evokes all the sensations of lived experience with an unerring sense of le mot juste.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments