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Tropic Of Ruislip
TROPIC OF RUISLIP is a sage for life on a modern executive housing estate, seething with the fears, snobbereis, frustrations and lusts of well-heeled young couples trundling uneasily towards middle age.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
About the author
Leslie Thomas
78 books38 followersBorn in Newport, Monmouthshire, 1931, Leslie Thomas is the son of a sailor who was lost at sea in 1943. His boyhood in an orphanage is evoked in This Time Next Week, published in 1964. At sixteen, he became a reporter, before going on to do his national service. He won worldwide acclaim with his bestselling novel The Virgin Soldiers, which has achieved international sales of over four million copies.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 5, 2023
I think I read this immediately after the Virgin Soldiers trilogy, and what an excellent choice it turned out to be.
The characters here are so well crafted and the humour so rich. This is a book which stands a second reading when in need of a giggle.
Edit. Just read this again, I think for the forth time. Mr Thomas, you are sadly missed.
The characters here are so well crafted and the humour so rich. This is a book which stands a second reading when in need of a giggle.
Edit. Just read this again, I think for the forth time. Mr Thomas, you are sadly missed.
December 31, 2016
There is always a danger that when you revisit something from the past that you loved it will disappoint. Films look cheap, games are tacky, food doesn’t taste the same and books can leaving you wondering “what was I thinking..” Nevertheless I have recently bought a couple of books that I felt deserved another look, one of them this old Leslie Thomas classic from 1974.
One thing re-reading this book has made me realise is just how much of his time Leslie Thomas was. Whilst much of the humour is timeless, and just as funny now as it was the first time around, the social commentary at the heart of the book wouldn’t make much sense to a new generation.
Tropic of Ruislip, which was also made into a TV drama, centres around the residents of a new housing estate, Plummers Park, somewhere on the outskirts of London. On one side of the railway track there is the council estate with its church, shops and launderette; on the other side is the executive housing populated by the aspiring middle class professionals.
The story centres around Andrew Maiby and his wife and daughter. Andrew is a journalist on the local newspaper who’s life is in a bit of a rut. The spark has gone from his marriage and his career is going nowhere. It is whilst reporting on events at the local magistrates court that he meets Bessie White, the 18-year old grand-daughter of one of the defendant. It is at this point that Andrew’s life begins to get a little complicated. Add into the mix a flasher, a proposal for a school for maladjusted children, affairs, frustrated ambitions and a vicar determined to add “Flat Roof Man” top his flock and you have all the ingredients for another suburban romp.
Tropic of Ruislip is one of Leslie Thomas’s better works, capturing the middle class England and all its values, failings and aspirations. Told with great humour and more than a touch of cynicism, I loved the interplay between the characters, particularly when residents from the different sides of the track came together. For me, it was not so much the thrust of the story itself that kept me interested but the smaller events and witty asides that kept me chuckling.
Leslie Thomas was one of the most popular writers of the time. Whilst I enjoyed reading this book again, I did feel it was dated. But that said, it is a great story and one that would be a good introduction for anyone who has not read his books before.
One thing re-reading this book has made me realise is just how much of his time Leslie Thomas was. Whilst much of the humour is timeless, and just as funny now as it was the first time around, the social commentary at the heart of the book wouldn’t make much sense to a new generation.
Tropic of Ruislip, which was also made into a TV drama, centres around the residents of a new housing estate, Plummers Park, somewhere on the outskirts of London. On one side of the railway track there is the council estate with its church, shops and launderette; on the other side is the executive housing populated by the aspiring middle class professionals.
The story centres around Andrew Maiby and his wife and daughter. Andrew is a journalist on the local newspaper who’s life is in a bit of a rut. The spark has gone from his marriage and his career is going nowhere. It is whilst reporting on events at the local magistrates court that he meets Bessie White, the 18-year old grand-daughter of one of the defendant. It is at this point that Andrew’s life begins to get a little complicated. Add into the mix a flasher, a proposal for a school for maladjusted children, affairs, frustrated ambitions and a vicar determined to add “Flat Roof Man” top his flock and you have all the ingredients for another suburban romp.
Tropic of Ruislip is one of Leslie Thomas’s better works, capturing the middle class England and all its values, failings and aspirations. Told with great humour and more than a touch of cynicism, I loved the interplay between the characters, particularly when residents from the different sides of the track came together. For me, it was not so much the thrust of the story itself that kept me interested but the smaller events and witty asides that kept me chuckling.
Leslie Thomas was one of the most popular writers of the time. Whilst I enjoyed reading this book again, I did feel it was dated. But that said, it is a great story and one that would be a good introduction for anyone who has not read his books before.
August 7, 2016
I read this in my teens, so I can't remember much, except that it was about funny people living humdrum lives in a rundown housing estate. I think it was fairly "naughty" for that era, so that's probably why I enjoyed it!
January 16, 2019
I read this a lifetime ago, enjoyed it then and thought I’d give it a bash again now, but I’m afraid it’s a bit dated.
The book’s entitled Tropic of Ruislip, but although the author mentions certain areas around Ruislip the characters and situations read more like Chorleywood. Ruislip is more white van man as opposed to a lovely little area of suburbia. Leslie Thomas refers to ‘flat-roofed man’ several times, but in all honesty I don’t know of any flat-roof areas in the vicinity. Perhaps I’m wrong.
There are one or two affairs in the book, but they’re not exactly racy affairs. Times have moved on, I suppose, and a re-write of this book or something similar would make for a decent read, but T of R was disappointing. It could have been a lot more fun.
I wouldn’t bother
The book’s entitled Tropic of Ruislip, but although the author mentions certain areas around Ruislip the characters and situations read more like Chorleywood. Ruislip is more white van man as opposed to a lovely little area of suburbia. Leslie Thomas refers to ‘flat-roofed man’ several times, but in all honesty I don’t know of any flat-roof areas in the vicinity. Perhaps I’m wrong.
There are one or two affairs in the book, but they’re not exactly racy affairs. Times have moved on, I suppose, and a re-write of this book or something similar would make for a decent read, but T of R was disappointing. It could have been a lot more fun.
I wouldn’t bother
September 8, 2012
Leslie Thomas' prose, characters and evocation of time and place are once again faultless, but in this book his plot lets him down. Unlike in the Virgin Soldier books, nothing ties together and no story really emerges from the collection of anecdotes. The ending is particularly weak. The characters really are wonderful creations, though, introduced to us beautifully, very funny, real and touching.
December 9, 2019
Archetypal portrayal of 1970's British middle-class angst/adultery, well-written, humorous and with excellent dialogue/characters. Would deffo read more Leslie Thomas when I want something light/entertaining.
July 2, 2018
It's OK this. Not life changing or radical. Just a well-written book with some social satire and a genuinely surprising ending.
Not much else to say really.
Not much else to say really.
September 24, 2025
The Tropic of Ruislip by Leslie Thomas is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... assuming most want a shorter list, seeing as they only read a few books anyway, this is also on Realini’s Best 150 Fiction Books and Top 100 Comedies
10 out of 10
When the world is convulsing, what with Kremlin Shorty trying to recreate the old USSR, Xi determined to copy his war in Taiwan (by the way, here we recognize the government of Taiwan as legitimate for the whole of China, it is only on five hundred square meters of property, but it is the best we can do), pandemic, inflation and about two thirds of the world either in cahoots with the Moscow despot or just claiming it is none of their business, you have a few choices, such as volunteering to fight in Mariupol, at least help refugees somehow, or try to escape this reality and maybe even have a few laughs.
It thus may sound abominable to immerse in something like The Tropic of Ruislip, which is a damn fine comedy, with serious tones, providing the argument against those who would shout – hey, you are having a laugh, when so many are screaming…which could be the feeling of guilt, penitence, mea culpa – that this not altogether a superfluous, mirthful text…we have a deep division, a rift between the better off, on one side of the tunnel in ‘Flat-roof man’ territory and on the opposite part of the tracks, the challenged families, those who have to hear neighbors quarreling, throwing things at each other, the conclusion somehow being that the better off have not found the solution for happiness, on the contrary…
Psychology studies have looked at the lottery winners, those who overnight gained in excess of a million dollars and found that this had made them happier for only a few months, after which they would return to their base level of happiness…besides, other research confirms this, one other analysis looked at what the happiest people have in common and it was not wealth –well, not the physical kind, and the under signed likes to boast of the fact that he is time affluent, which could be more respectable and rewarding that the financial kind, presumably –but strong bonds with family and friends…
The main character in the novel is Andrew Maiby (whose name has a significance, revealed when the joke is made about it, you sound as if you were not sure of the name), a reporter at a newspaper in Watford, who will be thirty seven in one of the chapters in the narrative, ‘he would like to be a good man, only is a bit lost’ thinks the woman that creates the statue of Flat-Roof Man, lives in Plummers Park, about thirty miles from Central London, on the better off side of the tracks, with his wife, Audrey, and their daughter, Lizzie – the latter is only fifteen, and already involved in some rather ‘advanced’ games of intimacy, on a barge, she will show her private parts, touch the others’, participate in nude drawing and probably more, to the astonishment, chagrin and despair of her father, who will venture on the same barge, with a girl who is eighteen, less than half his age, his philandering leads to the discovery of the exhibitionist (to some extent maybe) drawings and in his severe rage, he sets the vessel on fire, which was one of the most appalling acts he commits and this reader does not even see the point, aside from venting anger.
Simon Grant is one of the neighbors, married to Ena, who ‘had the breasts at any party within fourteen miles’, the husband is a pretentious, arrogant, selfish, vain, self-important fool, who is excessively proud of the physical beauty of his wife, while dismissing her completely on all other fronts, when she tries to say something at a party, or elsewhere, she is silenced to the point where, when she dances with Geoffrey Turvey for the first time, she realizes that they will have an affair and says ‘I may be married to the biggest prick in the world’…Ena and Geoff have an affair that puts them in some awkward positions, literally and morally, he has his backside burnt by the sun, when they have intercourse outdoors, which will be one of the elements making his wife, Cynthia, suspect foul play and while they are in the grass, a group of four girls stumble upon the copulating cheaters, who will have to decide soon what to do about their future…
Andrew Maiby has had an escapade two years before, when he had gone off from home, to live for six weeks whit a beautiful, crazy girl and he is about to enter another affair, perhaps – surely, with hindsight, but let us avoid spoilers – the last one, with a girl of eighteen, Bessie White, after they meet in court, where he is covering as a reporter the more interesting cases, and she has to get her rather mad grandfather out of trouble – the old man had stolen cocktail sticks which he does not need and…a live eel, which he had thrown into the prom where a baby was walked by – the latter part might be misremembered…
Bessie asks the journalist to keep her grandfather’s name out of the paper, for if her dad finds out –on her side of the tracks, they have mums and dads, not parents, she states at one point – he will throw granddad out, as a serial offender, who had been warned…however, Andrew tells her that this eel act is a funny story and it is beyond his powers to keep it out, and then there is the competition, which would publish it nonetheless, so when she offers to sleep with him, it is to no avail, at least for a while…
The young girl shows up at the bar where the reporter and his neighbors drink, with her massive, herculean father, who does demolitions for a living and who gives twenty pounds to Andrew for keeping the story out of the public eye and his protestations that he had had nothing to do with it lead nowhere…when the parent leaves, the girl has to buy the embarrassed Flat-Roof Man a drink and then engage in some jocular conversation with the neighbors present, telling them that her granddad was pushing heroin, then that he is abating prostitution, to see their faces drop to the floor and then laugh.
‘all life is trouble, it is death that is no trouble’ this a quote that is repeated and apparently comes from Zorba the Greek aka Alexis Zorba – which is included on The 100 Best Books Ever Written list http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/05/z... written by the titan Nikos Kazantzakis – Andrew has an affair with Bessie, in spite or because of the huge differences between them, one would be the age, another their social position, but for this reader, the biggest rift comes in the form of their varying degrees of education, it is evident from her manner of speaking that she is far away in spiritual terms and yes, there is always the possibility that you have someone who can barely write and he, she or they are fantastic thinkers, but the chance is small and what you have is a relationship in which the two have little to talk about, are extant in parallel universes…
10 out of 10
When the world is convulsing, what with Kremlin Shorty trying to recreate the old USSR, Xi determined to copy his war in Taiwan (by the way, here we recognize the government of Taiwan as legitimate for the whole of China, it is only on five hundred square meters of property, but it is the best we can do), pandemic, inflation and about two thirds of the world either in cahoots with the Moscow despot or just claiming it is none of their business, you have a few choices, such as volunteering to fight in Mariupol, at least help refugees somehow, or try to escape this reality and maybe even have a few laughs.
It thus may sound abominable to immerse in something like The Tropic of Ruislip, which is a damn fine comedy, with serious tones, providing the argument against those who would shout – hey, you are having a laugh, when so many are screaming…which could be the feeling of guilt, penitence, mea culpa – that this not altogether a superfluous, mirthful text…we have a deep division, a rift between the better off, on one side of the tunnel in ‘Flat-roof man’ territory and on the opposite part of the tracks, the challenged families, those who have to hear neighbors quarreling, throwing things at each other, the conclusion somehow being that the better off have not found the solution for happiness, on the contrary…
Psychology studies have looked at the lottery winners, those who overnight gained in excess of a million dollars and found that this had made them happier for only a few months, after which they would return to their base level of happiness…besides, other research confirms this, one other analysis looked at what the happiest people have in common and it was not wealth –well, not the physical kind, and the under signed likes to boast of the fact that he is time affluent, which could be more respectable and rewarding that the financial kind, presumably –but strong bonds with family and friends…
The main character in the novel is Andrew Maiby (whose name has a significance, revealed when the joke is made about it, you sound as if you were not sure of the name), a reporter at a newspaper in Watford, who will be thirty seven in one of the chapters in the narrative, ‘he would like to be a good man, only is a bit lost’ thinks the woman that creates the statue of Flat-Roof Man, lives in Plummers Park, about thirty miles from Central London, on the better off side of the tracks, with his wife, Audrey, and their daughter, Lizzie – the latter is only fifteen, and already involved in some rather ‘advanced’ games of intimacy, on a barge, she will show her private parts, touch the others’, participate in nude drawing and probably more, to the astonishment, chagrin and despair of her father, who will venture on the same barge, with a girl who is eighteen, less than half his age, his philandering leads to the discovery of the exhibitionist (to some extent maybe) drawings and in his severe rage, he sets the vessel on fire, which was one of the most appalling acts he commits and this reader does not even see the point, aside from venting anger.
Simon Grant is one of the neighbors, married to Ena, who ‘had the breasts at any party within fourteen miles’, the husband is a pretentious, arrogant, selfish, vain, self-important fool, who is excessively proud of the physical beauty of his wife, while dismissing her completely on all other fronts, when she tries to say something at a party, or elsewhere, she is silenced to the point where, when she dances with Geoffrey Turvey for the first time, she realizes that they will have an affair and says ‘I may be married to the biggest prick in the world’…Ena and Geoff have an affair that puts them in some awkward positions, literally and morally, he has his backside burnt by the sun, when they have intercourse outdoors, which will be one of the elements making his wife, Cynthia, suspect foul play and while they are in the grass, a group of four girls stumble upon the copulating cheaters, who will have to decide soon what to do about their future…
Andrew Maiby has had an escapade two years before, when he had gone off from home, to live for six weeks whit a beautiful, crazy girl and he is about to enter another affair, perhaps – surely, with hindsight, but let us avoid spoilers – the last one, with a girl of eighteen, Bessie White, after they meet in court, where he is covering as a reporter the more interesting cases, and she has to get her rather mad grandfather out of trouble – the old man had stolen cocktail sticks which he does not need and…a live eel, which he had thrown into the prom where a baby was walked by – the latter part might be misremembered…
Bessie asks the journalist to keep her grandfather’s name out of the paper, for if her dad finds out –on her side of the tracks, they have mums and dads, not parents, she states at one point – he will throw granddad out, as a serial offender, who had been warned…however, Andrew tells her that this eel act is a funny story and it is beyond his powers to keep it out, and then there is the competition, which would publish it nonetheless, so when she offers to sleep with him, it is to no avail, at least for a while…
The young girl shows up at the bar where the reporter and his neighbors drink, with her massive, herculean father, who does demolitions for a living and who gives twenty pounds to Andrew for keeping the story out of the public eye and his protestations that he had had nothing to do with it lead nowhere…when the parent leaves, the girl has to buy the embarrassed Flat-Roof Man a drink and then engage in some jocular conversation with the neighbors present, telling them that her granddad was pushing heroin, then that he is abating prostitution, to see their faces drop to the floor and then laugh.
‘all life is trouble, it is death that is no trouble’ this a quote that is repeated and apparently comes from Zorba the Greek aka Alexis Zorba – which is included on The 100 Best Books Ever Written list http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/05/z... written by the titan Nikos Kazantzakis – Andrew has an affair with Bessie, in spite or because of the huge differences between them, one would be the age, another their social position, but for this reader, the biggest rift comes in the form of their varying degrees of education, it is evident from her manner of speaking that she is far away in spiritual terms and yes, there is always the possibility that you have someone who can barely write and he, she or they are fantastic thinkers, but the chance is small and what you have is a relationship in which the two have little to talk about, are extant in parallel universes…
June 21, 2023
I do not believe that I actually had the energy to finish this book.
I have rarely read such a waste of time, The standard of writing is pathetic, I am told that this writer has in fact written several books. All I can add he is a very lucky chap if he is actually making a living
from this very poor output.
I have rarely read such a waste of time, The standard of writing is pathetic, I am told that this writer has in fact written several books. All I can add he is a very lucky chap if he is actually making a living
from this very poor output.
April 5, 2023
A story centring around two adulterous affairs in a London suburb.
Don't expect it to be laugh out loud funny. It has a more melancholy humour which expresses Thomas' sympathy for human imperfections.
Don't expect it to be laugh out loud funny. It has a more melancholy humour which expresses Thomas' sympathy for human imperfections.
February 3, 2011
A fairly stupid novel about a town that discovers its own sexuality. More innocent than you might expect.
August 3, 2024
"At Plummers Park you do not quarrel with your neighbours. Hate their guts but don’t quarrel. Be nice to them, admire their roses, pat their dog, smile, but don’t leer, at their wives.
January 2, 2025
Superior British sex comedy from back when such a thing existed and the mention of it didn't automatically make your toes curl. It concerns the goings on in an executive housing estate, where lives upwardly mobile "flat roof man" with his peccadilloes, regrets and impending middle age. One such is local journalist Andrew Maiby, whose name alone inspires diffidence, who embarks on an affair with a no-nonsense working class girl literally from the other side of the tracks. A flasher, some unlikely couplings and a possible adjacent home for maladjusted kids, keep the juices and the laughs flowing, even if the title, with its allusion to Henry Miller's genuinely transgressive filth, is a bit unnecessary.
September 9, 2017
This is so of the 1970's. Different times!
October 15, 2023
Maybe this was funny in the 1970s but it certainly isn't now
July 2, 2025
3.5. For the ending.
Want to Read
July 13, 2016* 1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list: Comedy
Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel – they appear here for the first time.
Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel – they appear here for the first time.
February 17, 2013
a little like tom sharpe, but not as good.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews