The Sound of Trumpets [Paperback]

John Mortimer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1999

When a Tory MP is found dead in a swimming-pool wearing a leopardskin bikini, the embittered Leslie (now Lord) Titmuss sees the ideal opportunity to re-enter the political arena. All he needs is a puppet, and Terry Flitton - inoffensive New Labourite - is perfect. Along with his beautiful, very PC wife, Terry heads blindly for the Hartscombe and Worsfield South by-election. But is he too busy listening for the sound of victory trumpets to notice that the Tory dinosaur is not quite extinct? John Mortimer's brilliant follow-up to "Paradise Postponed" and "Titmuss Regained", "The Sound of Trumpets" is a devilishly witty satire on political ambition, spin and sleaze, and the culmination of a masterly trilogy.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

John Mortimer is perhaps best known for his beloved books featuring Horace Rumpole, that irreverent barrister and "great defender of muddled and sinful humanity." When he isn't skewering the British legal system, however, Mortimer keeps busy with the Rapstone Chronicles, set in the rough-and-tumble world of English politics. Titmuss Regained and Paradise Postponed followed the fortunes of cunning and avaricious Tory MP Leslie Titmuss as he rose to the heights of power under Margaret Thatcher, then was laid low when her government fell. At the beginning of this third novel in the series, the deposed Lord Titmuss has retired to his country home to lick his wounds and plot revenge against his own party, which he holds responsible for the Iron Lady's defeat. Then a local Conservative MP dies while performing autoerotic acrobatics in his swimming pool, and Titmuss seizes the main chance. He offers to secretly help the idealistic young Labour candidate, Terry Flitton, win the seat. The first indication that Flitton is treading dangerous ground comes during their initial meeting, when Titmuss suggests he deny his socialist leanings until after the election, and Terry protests, "It wouldn't be true to my beliefs."

"Of course it would." His Lordship sighed and rose wearily to his feet as though about to explain an obvious point to a particularly thick House of Commons. "You'd be doing your beliefs the greatest possible service. You'd be giving them the chance of a lifetime. Then, if you beat Wee Willie, and your party wins the next general election, you can come up red as roses. Be as bloody Socialist as you like!"

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the path to power is simply littered with them. Before long the young idealist is compromising his ideals right and left and Titmuss is well on the way to achieving his revenge. Nobody has a better grasp of the absurdities and transgressions of British political life than John Mortimer, and The Sound of Trumpets is a delicious tour through the cutthroat world of electioneering told with scathing wit and a merciless eye. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Simply because England's political tides have turned from Tory Thatcherism to Blairite New Labour does not mean that Mortimer's Machiavellian Leslie Titmuss will be any less entertainingly scheming than in Paradise Postponed or Titmuss Regained. Although Titmuss has retired from Whitehall to write his dreaded tell-all memoirs, he takes a keen interest in Terry Flitton, Labour's candidate for the newly open parliamentary seat for the districts of Hartscombe and Worsfield South. Titmuss sees in Flitton an instrument of revenge against the party that betrayed his beloved Iron Lady, while Flitton, to his dismay, realizes that Titmuss possesses the killer political instincts that he lacks and needs. Mortimer, though a Labour voter, is a bipartisan satirist, skewering with equal enthusiasm both parties' rhetoric and campaign tactics. Flitton's farcical, accidental enlistment in the B-list local fox hunt not only provides a hilarious chase sequence, but also slyly dislodges conservative and contemporary mores. Flitton, however, should not be mistaken for a Blairite politician. It is precisely his old-fashioned ideals that are at odds with his success at the polls, his tenure in the new government and his downfall when Titmuss claims his Mephistophelian fee. At once lighthearted and cold-blooded, The Sound of Trumpets amusingly completes Mortimer's trilogy on modern Britain's rocky, convoluted political landscape. (Feb.) FYI: Viking will issue repackaged editions of Paradise Postponed and Titmuss Regained in January.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); First Edition edition (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140288511
• ISBN-13: 978-0140288513
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,410,049 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars political compromise receives a predictable poke, May 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sound of Trumpets (Rapstone Chronicles) (Hardcover)

I loved Paradise Postponed. Even the name Leslie Titmuss makes me smile. Leslie reappears here, but the attention focuses on a wimpy candidate whom it's hard to root for. All seemed a bit tired, even the humor.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars PUNGENCY AND PATHOS IN THIS SATIRE, May 5, 2005

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sound of Trumpets (Rapstone Chronicles) (Hardcover)

If there is one bipartisan voice in the darkly comic The Sound of Trumpets, it is that of the author, John Mortimer. With ripostes at the ready, his barbs are egalitarian as he mercilessly skewers both Labourites and Tories in this highly entertaining take on English political life.

Following Paradise Postponed and Titmuss Regained, the first two volumes in Mr. Mortimer's Rapstone Chronicles, The Sound Of Trumpets showcases the author at the peak of his acerbic wit, and reintroduces readers to Leslie Titmuss, MP, now a bitter, self-absorbed retiree who has little interest in his son or grandchildren, "whose names eluded him but to whom he sent modest cheques at Christmas with strict instructions that the money should be invested and not spent on computer games, C.D.s, rollerblades or any such unprofitable trifles."

What Lord Titmuss does have is an appetite for revenge upon those he considers traitorous and a gift for Machiavellian plotting.

When the local Tory MP meets an untimely and unseemly end (floating face down with a ping-pong ball in his mouth), young, ambitious Labourite Terry Flitton is nominated to stand for the now vacant seat representing the long Tory held districts of Hartscombe and Worsfield South.

A former employee of S.C.R.A.P. (The Society for Rural and Arboreal Protection), Terry is married to beautiful Kate, who is as devoted to saving the world as she is to vegetarianism. Terry is both charismatic and foolhardy. Upon meeting Agnes, the attractive fifty-year-old proprietress of a Socialist pamphlet strewn bookstore, he begins an affair with her.

Agnes sees Terry as one who will work for a Utopian world; Lord Titmuss sees him as a puppet to be manipulated.

Seeking retribution for supposed sins by his fellow conservatives, Lord Titmuss secretly masterminds the young Labour candidate's campaign. It is an uphill battle as the zealous hopeful becomes caught up in a B-list fox hunt, although he is pro animal rights; inadvertently appears soft on criminal offenders during a radio interview; and is found en deshabille with Agnes.

As a last resort, in a scene that hilariously punctures the pompous, Lord Titmuss the man who has been "the heart and soul of the Conservative Party" blends the wisdom of the Book of Ecclesiastes and the skewed logic that it is time for his party to lose as he delivers a public endorsement of Terry Flitton.

The crowd is stunned: "If Lord Titmuss had stripped and done a full frontal dance on the town hall steps they would not have been so astounded or, indeed, embarrassed." Nonetheless, they are obedient and Flitton wins the election handily.

However, the devilish Lord Titmuss does not rest. He mapped the young politicos heady rise; now he engineers a precipitous fall.

Mr. Mortimer's portraits of English eccentrics are unparalleled from Lord Titmuss's housekeeper, the fussbudget Mrs. Ragg who "either mothered him or, in moments of wild embarrassment, tried to flirt with him" to the acolytes surrounding Terry. They have their list of undesirable activities: "Selling alcoholic lemonade, catapults, war-like toys and bows and arrows of a certain size would be dealt with by imprisonment, as would holding raves, hang-gliding and disseminating books containing racially biased stories to persons of a tender age."

There is both pungency and pathos in the author's satire. The Sound Of Trumpets may be the final volume in this trilogy, but with John Mortimer one always hopes for more.

- Gail Cooke