Acclaimed as Jane Gardam’s masterpiece, Old Filth is a lyrical novel that recalls the fully lived life of Sir Edward
Feathers. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a
character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself.
They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was
already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect
English couple of the late 1940s.
As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the fifty-year union of two
remarkable people, this novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great
novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power.
