This, unlike most of Margaret Irwin's books, is not an historical novel. It is a peep-show at recent times, so fantastically gay that this, our London, appears as the iridescent scene of a pantomime or holiday charade.
What happened behind the door at which one had to knock four times? Many wildly incongruous happenings, but chiefly an attack on other doors, the 'everlasting doors' of Prince's Gate, Queen's Gate, Emperor's Gate, to make them open wide to the rash young adventurer Dicky who had once gatecrashed them, but was resolved to 'spurn Kensington, march on Mayfair,' and conquer both the New World and the Old.
How Dicky fought his way to fortune, and how Celia fought hers to freedom from behind the Gates of Kensington, by knocking four times on Dicky's door, is told in this story, which dances along as irresponsibly as a soap bubble against its brilliantly realized background, shading from the raffish to the respectable. For all its laughter and absurd situations, it is marked with the humorous sympathy and integrity that have distinguished all Margaret Irwin's work.
- ISBN10 1448205697
- ISBN13 9781448205691
- Publish Date 28 September 2011
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Bloomsbury Reader
- Format eBook (EPUB)
- Pages 240
- Language English
- URL http://bloomsbury.com/