Book Reviews

We cordially thank Ms d’Abernon, Mr Wethercombe, and Lord Northcote for their spirited contributions to what has become, in recent weeks, the most fastidiously mannered quarrel to grace our Letters page since the Great Footnote Dispute of 2024.

While we appreciate the high style (and the canine diplomacy) on display, we must remind correspondents that this is not, and will not become, the official noticeboard of the Mayfair Book Groupette’s admissions process. We sympathise with Mr Wethercombe’s plight, though we note that his novel is enjoying a healthy sales bump as a result of this correspondence—a phenomenon which will, we suspect, be regarded by some as better than entry to the ancient society.

We trust that all parties will now sheathe their pens, pour themselves a suitable fortified wine, and allow our readers to resume their customary diet of medieval discussions, modernist squabbles, and occasional angry notes about the correct plural of octopus.

The matter is, for our purposes, closed.

— The Editor

Sir,

It is with a heavy but disciplined heart that I write to draw a discreet curtain across the recent exchange between Mr Wethercombe and Ms d’Abernon regarding the Mayfair Book Groupette.

As a long-serving member of this most esteemed of societies, I can assure your readers that the Groupette does not, as Mr Wethercombe insinuates, derive any pleasure from excluding applicants. We derive it from selecting them. There is a distinction, though I appreciate it may be invisible to those unaccustomed to life beyond the velvet rope.

The admissions process—so tediously caricatured in these pages—exists for the same reason the Musée du Louvre does not hang every watercolour of a yacht that arrives at its gates. Standards must be upheld, and they are, if anything, more fragile in the realm of ideas than in the realm of oils and gouache.

Mr Wethercombe’s allusions to Pascal’s supposed “backward curl” are beneath reply, save to note that the hound has been known to take the same position toward visiting dignitaries, senior curators, and on one occasion a former Prime Minister. He is impartial in his disdain.

The Groupette has no wish to prolong this public correspondence, nor to weaponise your Letters page as an adjunct of our selection committee. I will simply observe that those who wait outside our doors may, in time, come to value the waiting more than the entry. For some, this becomes a kind of intellectual home. For others, it appears to become a book.

Yours faithfully,

Lord E. Northcote

Mayfair, London

Sir,

I am gratified that my modest literary debut, the novel Waiting for Pascal, has generated such spirited correspondence, even from within the ranks of its ostensible inspiration.

Ms. d’Abernon’s letter, while exquisitely phrased, rather confirms my central thesis: that the Mayfair Book Groupette’s admissions process is a byzantine pageant designed less to identify potential members than to remind them how very far they have to climb.

I take issue, however, with her suggestion that I was “oppressed” by the requirements. On the contrary, I found them invigorating – though I do wonder how my essay “Why Ulysses is a Terrible Book” could be dismissed in under a minute for “inappropriate whimsy.” I believe my description of this tome (consisting of certain observations regarding hedgehogs and teeth-brush) was entirely reasonable.

As to the misplaced paperback in Pimlico Wilde’s reading room, I located it in just under 46 minutes—only to be told that the test was invalid because I had not, in the process, paused to admire the dust-jacket typography.

Regarding the Afghan hound: I have the utmost respect for Pascal’s ceremonial role. Still, one cannot ignore that, after our brief meeting, he yawned twice, refused a proffered morsel of pão de ló, and promptly curled up with his back to me. If this was not a veto, it was, at the very least, an early warning.

Finally, Ms. d’Abernon writes that the waiting list is a “curated experience.” I applaud this. It is rare indeed to encounter curation so stringent that the object never actually enters the collection.

I remain, as ever, outside the Green Room. But I have grown used to the view.

Yours with measured affection,

Lionel Wethercombe

Author, Waiting for Pascal

Sir,

I read with unmatched incredulity your recent review of Lionel Wethercombe’s novel Waiting for Pascal, in which an ancient Society, the Mayfair Book Groupette – thinly disguised as “The Bibliotemporal Circle”, is depicted as some sort of social-literary oubliette where hopeful applicants moulder indefinitely in silk-lined purgatory.

Permit me to correct several grave misconceptions.

First, the assertion that our admission process is “arcane” is preposterous. It is in fact too transparent. All applicants are given the same perfectly straightforward requirements, which change on a regular basis to keep things fresh. Currently we ask applicants to: (1) write an essay on Why Ulysses is a Terrible Book demonstrating both intellectual rigour and a certain flair for malice; (2) discover the location, within 47 minutes, of a deliberately misplaced paperback in the Pimlico Wilde reading room; and (3) survive an 11-minute cross-examination by three existing members without either repetition or clichés. If Mr Wethercombe found these demands oppressive, the fault lies not in our procedures but in his constitution.

Second, we do not “veto applicants for their aura.” We veto them for things much more important, like misusing the term chiaroscuro in casual conversation, or admiring the work of Marco di Manchester, that halfwitted journeyman painter.

Third, the review insinuates that Pascal, our Afghan hound, wields a decisive influence over membership decisions. This is a vile calumny. Pascal’s role is purely ceremonial. He attends meetings purely in a non-voting capacity.

Finally, the reviewer implies that waiting to join the Groupette is equivalent to literary limbo. On the contrary, the waiting list is a curated experience. Prospective members have been known to improve their reading, wine selection, and wardrobe considerably during the interval. In one notable instance, an applicant entered the list as a dreary accountant and emerged four years later as an accomplished translator of medieval Catalan poetry.

I trust you will grant us the courtesy of publishing this clarification, so that the public may understand we are not the sadistic gatekeepers Mr Wethercombe imagines, but rather guardians of a delicate ecosystem of taste and scholarship.

Yours faithfully,

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary, Mayfair Book Groupette

Mayfair, London

By Lionel Wethercombe

If The Devil Wears Prada had been rewritten by a thwarted member of the London Library after three years on the Mayfair Book Groupette’s waiting list, the result might look something like Lionel Wethercombe’s debut, Waiting for Pascal.

The premise is simple, and almost certainly autobiographical: a man applies to join “a small, exclusive, literary society somewhere north of Piccadilly” and spends the next 312 pages doing absolutely nothing except wait to be accepted. The plot, if one may call it that, is a sequence of increasingly humiliating “application challenges,” ranging from composing a 2,000-word denunciation of Ulysses (“every page like brushing your teeth with a hedgehog”) to being interrogated about the moral resonance of ochre pigment by a woman appearing to wear a dead bird as a fascinator.

Wethercombe has clearly done his homework—or at least his eavesdropping. The Mayfair Groupette, here fictionalised as “The Bibliotemporal Circle,” is rendered in minute, slightly bitter detail: the arcane voting procedures; the unexplained vetoes (“Your aura doesn’t belong in this postcode”); and, of course, the inscrutable Afghan hound, Pascal, who holds the power to make or break a candidate with a single blink.

The problem—or perhaps the point—is that reading Waiting for Pascal feels alarmingly like the process it describes. There is a lot of exquisite set-dressing (inlaid writing desks, uncut pages, wine labels you have to Google), but the narrative moves forward with the stately inevitability of an understaffed parish council. Each chapter promises a decision “soon,” only to deliver another exquisitely irrelevant subcommittee.

It would be unfair to say nothing happens. In Chapter Twelve, the narrator manages to gain “provisional observer status” and attends a meeting devoted to a monograph on ecclesiastical textiles. This is followed by a 14-page description of an embroidered cope that somehow manages to be both ravishing and punitive. In Chapter Nineteen, he attempts to bribe a member with a bottle of pre-decimal Armagnac, only to discover it was already on the club’s “Banned Gifts” list.

To be fair, there are moments of sharp wit. Wethercombe skewers the literary-social complex of Mayfair with surgical precision, noting that “rejection here came not as a blow but as a raised eyebrow—quieter, crueller, and infinitely more expensive.” Yet the novel’s real triumph is its refusal to resolve. By the final page, the narrator is exactly where he began: outside the Green Room, waiting, clutching a notebook and a chilled bottle of something the Groupette will almost certainly disdain.

Some readers will find this infuriating; others will see it as art mirroring life. For the rest of us, Waiting for Pascal is a cautionary tale—proof that in certain corners of literary London, the journey is the destination, and the destination doesn’t want you.

Date: 30th August 2025

Prepared by: Fiona d’Abernon (Acting Secretary)

Subject: Expulsion of Mr. Conrad Smithe for Misrepresentation of Reading

1. Background

At the recent meeting of the Mayfair Book Groupette, convened to discuss The Cartographer’s Melancholy by Jeroen van Holt (limited edition, hand-printed on laid paper with uncut fore-edges), it became apparent that member Mr. Conrad Smithe had not, in fact, read the book despite multiple prior assurances to the contrary.

The Groupette has, since its inception, operated on the unspoken but inviolate principle that one attends having read the book. While lively dissent and selective skipping are tolerated, wholesale fabrication of engagement is not.

2. Evidence of Non-Reading

a) Initial Statement

Early in the evening, Mr. Smithe remarked on “the beautiful chapter about the Venetian gondolier,” to which several members immediately responded with puzzled expressions, as the novel is set entirely in rural Finland and contains no gondoliers.

b) Chronological Discrepancy

When asked about the closing scene, Mr. Smithe claimed it was “a little too sentimental for me,” despite the fact that the ending is a sudden flood and the drowning of the narrator—events entirely devoid of sentimentality.

c) Misuse of Vocabulary

Mr. Smithe repeatedly referred to “the protagonist’s atlas,” whereas in the text the work is always described as “a sea chart” or “the chart,” never as an atlas. Lord Northcote, visibly pained, noted this “betrays an unconvincing familiarity.”

d) Revealing Confession

When challenged during a lull, Mr. Smithe admitted—half under his breath—that he had “skimmed the publisher’s blurb and a review in The Times,” claiming that “life has been impossibly busy.”

3. The Claim

Mr. Smithe’s defence rested on the assertion that “having the gist” was as valuable as reading, and that the discussion benefitted from “outsider impressions.” This was met with quiet but unanimous disapproval. The Groupette regards such rationale as incompatible with its ethos of deep, unhurried engagement.

4. The Apology (Too Late)

After the formal portion of the meeting had concluded, and as coats were being retrieved, Mr. Smithe offered a more contrite apology:

“I’m sorry, truly—I thought I could wing it, and I see now that I’ve underestimated the… rigour here. I won’t do it again.”

While the sincerity of tone was noted, the apology was delivered after a decisive undercurrent had already formed. The Groupette is, as Molyneux observed, “not a place one wings anything.”

5. Decision

Following a brief members-only discussion (Smithe having already departed), it was agreed—by silent show of hands—that Mr. Smithe’s membership be revoked with immediate effect. The Chair will send a courteous letter citing “misalignment with Groupette practice” and “a breach of reading trust.”

6. Reflection

The decision was made without pleasure. Smithe had, in previous months, offered genuine insight and wit. Yet the Groupette’s survival rests on its one fragile rule: that the book has been read, privately, entirely, without pretence. Once broken, the shadow it casts cannot be erased.

Pascal spent the remainder of the evening lying by the empty chair, which felt, to more than one of us, like an accusation.

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary

Mayfair Book Groupette

Date: August ‘25

Time: 7:04 PM – 11:12 PM

Location: The Green Room, Pimlico Wilde, Mayfair

Attendees:

• Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)

• Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary)

• Lord E. Northcote

• Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian)

• Hugo Van Steyn (Heckle’s)

• India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)

• Max Duclos (Collector)

• Pascal (Afghan hound, wearing a discreet ecclesiastical-style collar in deep crimson)

Book Discussed:

An Annotated Catalogue of Portuguese Ecclesiastical Vestments, 1640–1690 by Father Joaquim de Meneses (Lisbon, 1978; bilingual edition in Portuguese and French; illustrated with 138 black-and-white plates and 17 colour).

1. Opening Remarks

Molyneux praised the book’s “heroically narrow scope,” noting that it “achieves what most art history monographs cannot: to make the reader care deeply about orphrey borders.” He described it as “a cathedral in miniature, woven in silk and gold thread.”

2. Discussion Summary

• Dr. Lorrimer marvelled at the depth of research, especially the chapter on liturgical colour changes following the political unrest of 1640. She admitted to being “genuinely moved” by the diagrammatic fold-out of cope construction.

• India Trelawney declared it “the best-dressed book we’ve read all year,” praising the meticulous descriptions of silver-gilt embroidery techniques. She also claimed—without irony—that she is now considering a chasuble-inspired evening coat.

• Lord Northcote found the annotations “dry as Lenten bread,” but admired the scholarship. He was particularly struck by the subtle political symbolism in vestment iconography, such as the discreetly embroidered Braganza arms following the break with Spain.

• Hugo Van Steyn expressed disappointment at the monochrome plates, calling them “a tragic economy” given the subject. However, he defended the work’s exhaustive provenance research, noting that one tunic’s survival through a convent fire was “as thrilling as any Hollywood chase scene.”

• Max Duclos wondered aloud whether a single garment could bear so much meaning without collapsing under its own symbolism. He also suggested that the colour plates were “teasingly few” and that Father Meneses “knew exactly what he was doing.”

• Fiona d’Abernon confessed she had taken the book to bed “as one might a box of fine chocolates,” reading only a few vestments each night to savour them properly. She was particularly taken with the cope featuring an appliqué of St. Catherine’s wheel.

3. Objects on View

• A 17th-century Portuguese stole in crimson damask (loaned from Pimlico Wilde’s textile collection, displayed under glass)

• Three samples of modern orphrey work, for tactile comparison

• A silver thurible from the same period, whose chain links were compared—favourably—to the finesse of certain embroidered edgings

4. Refreshments

• Aperitif: White port and tonic with a twist of orange

• Canapés: salt cod croquettes, miniature custard tarts (pastéis de nata), and marinated green olives

• Main wine: Dão red, 2017

• Dessert: almond and cinnamon cake, served with sweet Madeira

5. Other Business

• The Silence of Shadows: A Comparative Study of Umbra in Netherlandish Still Life (Van Holt, 1982) suggested as next book.

• Trelawney suggested a possible field trip to Lisbon to see the vestments at the Museu de São Roque; general interest was high.

• Agreement that while Meneses’s prose could be soporific, his dedication elevated the subject to the realm of the sacred.

6. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 11:12 PM after Pascal, without prompting, curled up beside the crimson stole and fell asleep.

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary

Mayfair Book Groupette

Date: August ‘25

Time: 7:00 PM – 11:20 PM

Location: The Red Room, Pimlico Wilde

Attendees:

• Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)

• Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary)

• Lord E. Northcote

• Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian)

• Hugo Van Steyn

• India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)

• Max Duclos (Collector)

• Conrad Smithe (Full Member)

• Pascal (Afghan hound, unusually alert)

Book Discussed:

Conquer This! The Secret Diaries of William of Normandy (anonymous editor; self-published, 1067; vellum-textured boards with medieval illumination; based on newly discovered manuscripts found in a Normandy wine cellar).

1. Opening Remarks

Molyneux welcomed members, cautioning that the evening’s discussion might get heated. He summarised the book’s premise: the first-person diaries of William the Conqueror, blending battlefield accounts with intimate asides, political strategising, and—strangely—numerous jokes about oysters.

2. Discussion Summary

• Dr. Lorrimer opened with a warning that “the historical accuracy of this book is still being decided”. She admitted the passages on the harrowing of the North were plausible in tone, but she doubted the authenticity of William’s alleged fondness for garlic eclairs.

• India Trelawney confessed to enjoying the book purely for its sartorial asides, particularly the description of Harold Godwinson’s “baggy chausses.” She argued that even if forged, the text was “a valuable exercise in medieval fashion imagination.”

• Lord Northcote declared the diary “almost certainly a fabrication,” citing its suspiciously modern idioms and a reference to “winning hearts and minds” centuries before the phrase existed. However, he admitted the battle descriptions had “a salt-sweat specificity” rare in pseudo-medieval pastiche.

• Hugo Van Steyn took a contrarian position, proposing that the work could be “a palimpsest of genuine material, edited with malice aforethought.” He was intrigued by the consistent detail regarding food supplies, especially the recurring motif of smoked eels.

• Max Duclos found the book “too pleased with itself,” accusing the anonymous editor of using the Conqueror’s voice as “a vehicle for pub-level humour in illuminated manuscript disguise.”

• Conrad Smithe defended it as “an act of creative literary archaeology,” suggesting its outrageousness forced readers to reconsider what they take for historical truth.

• Fiona d’Abernon admitted to laughing aloud at William’s supposed marginalia in the Bayeux Tapestry (“That’s not my chin”, “The arrow in the eye is romantic nonsense”, “I thought we were invading Brittany, not Britain”, “I hope they don’t make a tapestry of this battle”). She argued that, authentic or not, and she tended to think it was, the text succeeded as a piece of self-conscious historical play.

3. Artworks & Objects on View

• A page of the Domesday Book (from Pimlico Wilde archives)

• A reproduction of a missing Bayeux Tapestry panel, hand-stitched by contemporary artist Elodie Varn depicting William doing a handstand next to a goblet of cider

• A forged medieval charter once sold at auction, brought by Van Steyn for comparison

• A model Norman helm, which Pascal briefly attempted to wear

4. Refreshments

• Aperitif: Calvados spritz with cinnamon

• Canapés: smoked beef pâté on rye wafers, miniature game pies, roasted chestnuts in paper twists

• Main wine: Côte de Nuits Pinot Noir 2018

• Dessert: apple tart with honey glaze, served alongside spiced mead “in the Norman style”

5. Other Business

• March Book: The Cartographer’s Melancholy by Jeroen van Holt (carried over from last month’s vote).

• Proposal for a future evening dedicated to “playful forgeries and invented memoirs”, with members to bring examples from their own collections.

• General consensus: whether real or fake, Conquer This! “would have been banned in the 11th century, and possibly in the 20th.”

6. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 11:20 PM after an unresolved debate on whether William’s diary entry for October 14th, 1066 (“Bit of a day. Might have overdone it.”) was authentic genius or pure invention. Pascal barked once, which some took as a vote.

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary

Mayfair Book Groupette