Read it as an antidote to Jeepers.....
I've just finished this amazing find from @alovelywaytospendanevening
💬 0 🔁 28 ❤️ 59 · Ambassador of Loss is a 1955 novel by Michael Scarrott (pseudonym of A. S. T. Fisher, an Anglican priest). According to F
It's called 'Ambassador of Loss' by AST Fisher, written under the pseudonym of Michael Scarrott. He was at Oxford at the same time as Mary Renault and also knew WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood.
There's no evidence or reason to believe that he knew Renault or had even read 'The Charioteer'. I read somewhere that this was a response to the nihilism of 'Lord of the Flies', but this book also fits very nicely into the 1930s Renault-verse. Renault had some experience of boarding schools from her work as a school nurse (including a brief stint at EF Benson's old school) but this author had been a school master and an Anglican priest.
The real draw is not the plot, character development or even nuance, but the intriguing glimpse it gives into school life from the point of view of a man who was religious and part of the establishment but railed against the harms of adhering to 'conventional morality' at all costs. It's a short and easy read, and actually full of little gems and vivid accounts of school life.
He does not have the comic genius of Benson or TB Hughes but his writing is full of affection for the boys, very engaging with a slight poetic bent and the beautiful English countryside also plays an important supporting role to great effect. Oh yes and the illustrations are delightful.