On an altogether sunnier note, I was delighted to see Mary Clive’s classic story of Christmas in an Edwardian country house, Christmas with the Savages, reissued by Jane Nissen Books (£7.99.) It is the story of the priggish only child, Evelyn, condemned to spend the holiday with the tolerant Lady Tamerlane — ‘having herself been one of a family of 15, she was resigned to the behaviour of children’— and her brood of ill-disciplined grandchildren. Of these the large family of the Savages is particularly boisterous, being based on the author’s own Pakenham brothers and sisters. Poor Evelyn’s attempts to placate the other children while ingratiating herself with the grown-ups are doomed to failure but extremely funny. Also, it is reassuring, when watching one’s own children’s misbehaviour over the festive season, to realise that things were just as bad nearly 100 years ago.
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