Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

I launched into this book, which I should have read many years ago but didn’t, expecting something of the Aunty Mame of Aunt Julia (and the Scriptwriter) ilk. But this aunt is a seriously naughty woman. There’s no indulgent smile as you watch her get up to all manner of really wicked deeds: she is indeed utterly selfish, unrepentant and single mindedly bad. Despite all that I did like her and I also liked her nephew, the stitched-up retired and boring bank manager and narrator, who is in the throes of finding himself through the good offices of Aunt Agatha. Grahame Green is a ‘proper’ writer so there’s a lot of pleasure to be had in his language and especially in his wit. And this book is witty, a terrific satire of English life in the vein of Mitford and Huxley.