Eca's English Letters

Solemn, grand, vulnerable - and a little absurd: England in the 1880s. A young consul, Eca de Queiros, writes letters to his Brazilian readers, giving a dry, amused, not impartial account of the events of the day. He brings alive people and places, blowing stylish raspberries at venerable institutions. A corrective to the British propaganda of the period and to the rhetoric of Great Britain Plc, Eca's English Letters provides timeless amusement from its vantage-point in history, a vision of Victorian Britain less eminently civilised than it thought itself to be.The gentry endures country-bound winter weeks (fashion forbids them from appearing in London). Lord Beaconsfield is mourned, and a national legend buried. The Times remains the gruff voice of a post-prandial Establishment which has just made a meal of the whole world and put its feet on the fender. Abroad, John Bull is sweet reason; Irish rebels must not incommode English landlords; Egyptian rebels must learn to respect their rulers - however, a practical joker inserts an erotic paragraph into a pompous politican's speech after The Times has gone to press...