A Wedding in the Country
London 1963. Lizzie from Surrey is staying at louche Aunt Gina’s while attending a Pimlico cookery school because Mother thinks this will improve her matrimonial eligibility, but Gina’s man-friend exhibits an untoward interest. Luckily, fellow student Alexandra happens to own a Belgravia townhouse – Lizzie and friend Meg, another pupil, move in. Resident father-figure David, the only gay character in the novel, provides meals, advice, piano-music and a decoy for awkward parents. The three dolly birds attend and throw dinner parties; Lizzie meets Hugo Double-Barrel who happens to be heir to a baronetcy and is going very steady with frosty, gorgeous Electra. Nevertheless, feelings develop and the newly-mets embark on the quandary-strewn road towards the eponymous wedding.
Why 1963, though? There’s hardly a mention of that era-straddling, dynamic, colourful, noisy, transformational decade itself. The fluffy, undemanding plot is so relentlessly upper-middle class with country estate settings and posh characters that it would be more at home in 18- or even 1763. The one ‘cockney’ speaker is rumoured to be Old Etonian! There’s no contemporary slang (e.g., ’groovy’ or ‘fab’) and the girls are too charmingly naïve to be mistaken for women’s libbers despite voicing some objections to patronisation. We get mini-dresses but no Mini Coopers, canapés and sherry but no Cliff and the Shadows. Back then pop music was everywhere. Why couldn’t one of The Beatles three number one hits of 1963 have been playing on a background transistor radio somewhere? Dedicated followers of fashion, dressmaking and cooking will enjoy those descriptive passages, also the amusing etiquette conundrum of whether it is ok to smoke after eating your profiteroles if others haven’t yet finished. Yes, there is a well-drawn contrast between this and the previous generation’s attitudes, but overall, it’s an opportunity missed. Disappointing.
