Nigel Williams (1) (1948–)

An ITV production....forty years ago that would have meant high quality, but nowadays it doesn't. This one hour 40 minutes high speed tour through the life and times of George VI and his wife Elizabeth from meeting until his death is compromised by its short length, a high speed tour through highlights rather than anything in-depth.

The settings and costumes are fine, and so are some of the performances, especially as Juliet Aubrey as Elizabeth, someone any man could fall for. But Alan Bates' George V descends rapidly into caricature, and Charles Edwards makes an Edward VIII who has all the self-absorption but little of the charm. There are some strange characterisations amongst the supprting cast as well, with assistant private secretary Tommy Lascelles shown as a fat wise old duffer.

Overall this is inadequate stuff.… (more)

Unfaithfully Yours is an epistolary novel about the shenanigans of a groups of seven 60-something Putney residents, and a private detective engaged by one of them. The seven used to share holidays together, along with the now deceased wife of one of them.

At the outset, the novel is about the engagement of the detective to spy on the activities of one of the men, whose wife suspects him of an affair. As the revelations of adultery among the group become more widespread, copious and complicated, the focus shifts to the death of the wife: was it the suicide that the police concluded?

Nigel Williams is playing mostly for laughs here, and so has created a set of fairly grotesque characters to help his plot along. Unfortunately, his epistolary structure doesn't help this. What the reader gets is 300 pages of the innermost thoughts of grotesque people that are neither funny nor sympathetic. A lot of the prose is badly overblown. The novel badly needs a point of view that the reader can identify with; the detective is probably the likeliest candidate, but even he comes across as a bit gormless.

The resolution to the mystery of Pamela's death is essentially done Christie-style with all of the suspects addressed by the detective. But in this novel, the detective has to do it by letter and the suspects' reactions have to be delayed by return post. It's incredibly clumsy and unsatisfying. Add to that, a lot of the letters, going by their addressing, could never have been received by the addressee, yet they are still able to respond.

This book is a confusing, unfunny, unsatisfying mess.… (more)

A quirky, very wry and very funny book about being dead. You can always rely on Williams to write something totally off-piste, and this kept me reading right to the very end. Yes, there were some slow passages and the sections about the dog were pointless and rather irritating, but the way the characters were developed and rounded out, plus the surprises when the crimes are solved, are top-notch. Moreover, the last few pages are glorious and very moving. A very fine portrait of a modern marriage.… (more)