Sequels

I don't know if there's something in the wind but the day after Major Benjy arrived comes news that a sixth Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book is on the way.

According to The Register Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series¹, has been given permission by Adams' widow to write the book, which is to be titled And Another Thing.... How this will work, given that Adams very effectively ended the series² at the close of Mostly Harmless is open to question.

Which bring us back to Major Benjy.

This is a sequel to EF Benson's stunning set of stories about Mapp and Lucia. The six novels by Benson are particular favourites of mine which I reread to every year or two. You may well know of them through the television adaption done in the eighties with Prunella Scales as Mapp, Geraldine McEwan as Lucia, and Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie. They're gorgeous books.

Benson died in 1940 but in 1985 and 1986 Tom Holt (before he became more famous for his rather curious and better known novels about gods and their doings) wrote two sequels Lucia in Wartime and Lucia Triumphant which, it has to be said, were pretty good. There were the odd flaws: turns of phrase which came from a later age and a couple of minor contradictions with Benson's books but despite that the addition of two more books to the cannon was very welcome.

But there were no more as Tom went off to do other things.

Now there's a new Mapp and Lucia novel in print: Major Benjy by Guy Fraser-Sampson. I was alerted to this when looking for The Tilling Society aka the Mapp and Lucia fan club, of which I used to be a member. Sadly they are no more but a group of members still hold the annual dinner as the Friends of Tilling and Guy was due to talk about the book there.

So I've bought a copy and it's lying here waiting for me to read. It appears to be less about the lead characters of the other books but instead centres more on Major Flint and the other supporting characters. An interesting way to go.

No doubt I'll report back here later but first I've got a new (to me, which is a novelty in itself) PG Wodehouse to finish.

1. About which I confess I knew nothing until today, it appears to be children's literature, so having him writing another HHttG book is even more of a worry.
2. The BBC, in their radio version, left the ending far more open, so suspect that may be the kicking off point. Thus are the joys of the HHttG.