Cuthbert Banks is young, handsome, and plus four on the Wood Hills links, but he can make no impression on the soulful girl of his heart. When an eminent Russian novelist kisses him on both cheeks, however, Adeline’s attitude changes from scorn to adoration. This book marks an epoch in my literary career. It is written in blood. It is the outpouring of a soul as deeply seared by Fate’s unkindness as the pretty on the dog-leg hole of the second nine was ever seared by my iron. It is the work of a very nearly desperate man, an eighteen-handicap man who has got to look extremely slippy if he doesn’t want to find himself in the twenties again, from his Fore!ward A comic genius recognised in his own life time as a classic and an old master of farce.
