While their politics may be unappealing, you’re missing out on some expert storytelling and brilliant characterisation if you ignore these books
I wanted to write a book about conservative popular fiction, since I’ve been studying it for decades. Old-fashioned Tory fiction fascinates me, partly because it’s social anthropology, with authors and characters from a different world. The techniques and skills in the splendid writing in these novels are also under-appreciated.
John Buchan, Dornford Yates and Angela Thirkell are three of the best in this genre, and were phenomenally influential. Buchan was a Conservative Unionist MP for eight years (among many other things). His most famous character, Richard Hannay, is an unreconstructed Rhodesian imperialist, but should be read alongside Buchan’s other heroes in a cast of Conservative politicians and adventurers. Yates staunchly opposed social change in his sparkling social comedies and brilliant thrillers. Thirkell reinvented Trollope’s Barsetshire in 30 novels, making a complex saga of intermarrying county families who laughed at liberals and sneered at socialists.
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