Change is inevitable

Isabel Colegate's The Shooting Party gives away the end of the story on the first page: "It caused a mild scandal at the time, ... an error of judgment which resulted in a death." The book then describes events leading up to the incident, which takes place a few months before the outbreak of WW1, when Sir Randolph invites a group of privileged people to take part in a shoot at Nettleby Park. The old-fashioned peer has "all but bankrupted the estate" to entertain the late King.

The upper class characters include Sir Randolph's wife Minnie who "likes a house full"; his daughter Ida, "a matter-of-fact sort of person"; his grand-daughter Cicely who is "flirting with the Hungarian Rakassyi"; his ten-year-old grandson Osbert, worried about a pet duck. Of the guests, Gilbert Hartlip is "one of the best shots in England", his wife Aline is having an affair with Charles Farquhar, "a person of no significance" but also a good shot. Then there's Lord Lilburn, "a bit of an ass", whose wife Olivia is "widely admired" for her "natural look", especially by love-struck Lionel Stephens who writes poetry.

The lower classes include Glass the gamekeeper and his only son Dan, poacher Tom Harker who makes up the beater numbers at the last minute, animal rights supporter Cornelius Cardew, and the servants who work in the house. One of these, Ellen, was the only character I found to be engaging, although the guests obviously have no idea who she is.

I warmed to Ellen but no-one else, and kept on reading to find out who died. I don't much care about the disappearance of the Edwardian era's upper classes and their activities (although pheasant shoots still take place in 21st century England). Was the shoot a metaphor for the Great War? Perhaps Colegate wanted to comment on the rise of industrialisation and the fall of "traditional" country activities? Change is inevitable, and the older generation generally don't like it. Sir Randolph considers that after WW1, the new age "embodied changes for the worse, a sort of mass loss of memory, and the replacement of the common understandings of a civilised society by the destructive egotism of a barbaric one."