Of the four books that I am reading to mark the ninetieth birthday of Penguin Books this was probably the one I was looking forward to most. Eric Linklater was an established novelist by 1935 when Penguin began, with six of his twenty three novels published by then and a seventh coming out that year. Poet’s Pub was his second work (1929) and would be adapted into a film in 1949 although that version bears little relation to the original novel. I was already familiar with Linklater’s work from probably his best known novel ‘Private Angelo’ a comic satire of war based in late WWII Italy and published in 1946, which I first read and enjoyed a decade or so ago and probably should get off the shelves and re-read at some point. However I wasn’t disappointed with this also comedic book which at times, such as the extended car chase from the fictional village of Downish, north west of London, to Scotland and the aftermath of the Elizabethan dinner which provides the opportunities for the two thefts that push the plot forward, descends into near farce.

Saturday Keith, named as such by his father as he was the seventh son and they had all been born on different days of the week is the eponymous poet and the Pelican Inn in Downish owned by the mother of Quentin, an old friend of his from university days, is the public house. Or more accurately the inn/hotel as the regular guests staying there along with the staff provide Linklater with his much varied cast of characters and few patrons of the public bar are even mentioned. It’s a setting that has attracted many authors over the decades from E M Forster’s ‘A Room with a View’ to Anita Brookner’s ‘Hotel du Lac’ and even Stephen King’s ‘The Shining’ along with numerous crime classics, where else could you believably have such a diverse group of people in one place with no need to explain who they are and why they are there?

Keith took the job as landlord with the hope that along with a regular income, something definitely lacking for the vast majority of poets, he would have a quiet space to work on his magnum opus, the poem that would finally mark his breakthrough onto the public consciousness. The work running a surprisingly successful inn once it become known it is run by a literary gentleman, and thereby attracts a more upmarket clientele, means he struggles to find time to work on his epic and the assorted distractions both from Quentin and Joan Benbow, the daughter of one of the guests whom Keith has fallen madly in love with add to the comic possibilities. Quentin has likewise fallen in love only he is smitten by Nelly Bly who is working there as a maid but in reality is a part time journalist for a national newspaper that is hoping to get some interesting stories. Amongst other guests there is an American by the name of Mr van Buren who has invented a new method for processing crude oil and if I say that his paper describing the technique is in an identical folder to that used by Keith for his poem I’m sure you can see where confusion lies later on in the book. Throw in some industrial espionage, a missing secret recipe for a blue cocktail available in light and dark shades to represent Oxford and Cambridge along with a few other quirks of the people staying there and the story positively bowls along dragged down only by the overlong car chase but even that has its redeeming and indeed ridiculous features.

Poet’s Pub is still in print by Penguin, although it now comes under Penguin Classics which I think is only fitting for this excellent novel that has stood the test of time remarkably well.