Hostage: London
Notes
Another Household potboiler; these are fun. Enough wry Englishness and reserve to make them a cut above the kind of 'spy thriller' at which I would normally turn up my nose. Notably this one features an anarchist secret agent, who's been working with the non-soviet communists. Our hero is a terrorist, and has been working to bring about the True Universal Communism in England. But the new plan might be going too far, and our hero decides to investigate - putting himself at risk from all sides. He's basically entertaining the idea of double-crossing his own terrorist network, but there's no way he can go straight and actually go to the Authorities.
All three Geoffrey Household books I've read have this at their core: the hero must Do It Himself with no recourse to an outside network. Is it the prototype of every Mission:Impossible movie, where Ethan Hunt's team is disavowed by their IMF agency and must save the world by themselves?
All three Geoffrey Household books I've read have this at their core: the hero must Do It Himself with no recourse to an outside network. Is it the prototype of every Mission:Impossible movie, where Ethan Hunt's team is disavowed by their IMF agency and must save the world by themselves?
Noted on September 15, 2026
Quotes
[Just noting because I'm going to be in Cheltenham and the Cotswolds next spring] Then I drove back to the quiet lane in which I had originally left my car and sat down on warm, short turf to think and look at the map with Cheltenham spread out at my feet and the steep escarpment of the Cotswolds behind.Quoted on September 15, 2026
The obscenities of the society I seek to destroy are definite, while the beauty which I may destroy with them is unknown and unlimited. A statement of the obvious. Preserve the blossom and your insecticide destroys the bees. Control the flooding and you pollute the estuary. We can never foresee the appalling damage done by long-range good intentions and I suspect that the Cosmic Purpose cannot foresee it either, that it is in fact a Cosmic Experimenter.Quoted on September 15, 2026
The proof of the final degradation of the bourgeois society is that it can be enticed by an offer of twopence off to buy an unwanted article, the whole value of which does not reach twopence apart from packaging and the costly narcotics of advertising.
Is it fair to call such an insignificant human folly the final degradation? Yet degradation it is, and insignificant it is not. "Twopence off nothing" lies at the base of all the economics of the developed world. It will be plain enough when food, warmth and work at last begin to fail.Quoted on September 15, 2026
…I have been forced, logically, to repudiate all forms of terrorism because I repudiate the most effective. That has involved deep questioning of my political beliefs. Is there a label which still fits me? I think not. Labels only help those whose sympathies are emotional rather than reasoned. Accept a label and you get your thinking done for you free of further charge on the intelligence.Quoted on September 15, 2026