Product Description

The landscape is flawless, the trees majestic, the flora and the fauna are right and proper, the whole is picturesquely typical of rural England at its best. Sir Giles, an MP of few principles and curius tastes, plots to destroy all this by building a motorway smack through it, to line his own pocket and at the same time to dispose of his wife, the capacious Lady Maude. Sir Giles recruits to his side Hoskins, a corrupt local official, Lord Leakham, the environmental equivalent of a hanging judge, and Dundridge, a troublesome bureaucrat with an unhealthy passion for order. Against this powerful lobby are ranged a mere handful of local residents led by Lady Maude. Hardly at first sight a team to withstand the batteries of official inertia, Compulsory Purchase Orders and bulldozer blades. But, Lady Maude enlists a surprising ally in her enigmatic gardener Blott, patriotism burns bright. Lady Maude's dynamism and Blott's concealed talents enable them to meet pressure with mumicry, loaded tribunals with publicity and chilli powder, requisition orders with wickedly spiked beer. To every official ploy, Blott and Lady Maude oppose their own ingenious and unprincipled countermove until in a spectacular finale Blott, with four hundred tins of baked beans among his armoury, takes on the army single handed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20102 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his National Service in the Marines before going to South Africa in 1951, where he did social work before teaching in Natal. He had a photographic studio in Pietermaritzburg from 1957 until 1961, when he was deported... From 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. In 1986 he was awarded the XXXIIIeme Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret. He is married and lives in Cambridge.

Customer Reviews

THANK GOD FOR TOM SHARPE
Sharpe makes me laugh on depressing Winter days (which last for nine months of the year in the West Midlands). As British television is so mediocre, this is good. "Blott on the Landscape", as with everything else Sharpe has penned, is my guaranteed fix on keeping my sanity - i.e. laughter is the best medicine. As a writer of fiction for the last 20 odd years, I have long given up reading fiction as my analytical mind invariably works out the denoument in about the first 20 pages. Sharpe is different, he keeps me smiling in a world that has forgotten how to smile.

Masterful! Comic Genius!
This is typical Sharpe. That's to say it's absolutely hilarious. I'm a younger reader and I'm not too keen on or interested in politics, but the way he makes it all seem so stupid is great! He has the ability to show that a character thinks his plans are masterful and infallible when everyone else knows the ideas are doomed to failure. The stereotypical characters will really get you worked up, whether you love or hate them. Great stuff!

An unlikely hero
When you consider who could have been the hero of this tale; a rich and powerful business-minded peer, his rich and in many ways more powerful wife, a government troubleshooter or even several Zebras, Lions and Rhinos, you would be surprised that the hero was in fact a quiet Italian gardener with a love for all things English. This, along with the ability to create rib-tickling chaos like it were going out of fashion, is Sharpe all over and is why any book of his is worth a couple of afternoons any day.