Baring's homage to a decadent and carefree Edwardian age depicts a society as yet untainted by the traumas and complexities of twentieth-century living.
With wit and subtlety a happy picture is drawn of family life, house parties in the country and a leisured existence clouded only by the rumblings of the Boer War. Against this spectacle Caryl Bramsley (the C of the title) is presented – a young man of terrific promise but scant achievement, whose tragic-comic tale offsets the privileged milieu.
Maurice Baring (1874–1945) was an English intellectual versatile, known as a playwright, poet, novelist, translator, essayist, travel writer and war correspondent.
He was the fifth son of Edward Charles Baring, first Baron Revelstoke, the Baring banking family, and his wife, Louisa Emily Charlotte Bulteel, the second Earl Grey granddaughter. Maurice Baring was educated at Eton College and Trinity College at Cambridge University. After an abortive start and a diplomatic career, he traveled widely, especially in Russia. Maurice was an eyewitness to the Russo-Japanese War for the London Morning Post.
