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Tory Heaven or Thunder on the Right
Tory Heaven (1948) was Marghanita Laski's third book, another satire after both Love on the Super Tax and To Bed with Grand Music.
The period 1945–8 in Britain can now be seen as one of some extraordinary achievements, the most important being the creation of the NHS. But for many of those living in Britain at the time it was an age of austerity, punctuated by regular crises. Wartime rationing not only continued, but its range was broadened.
The 1945 Labour victory was based on a broad popular wish to transform the equality of wartime sacrifice into a fairer peacetime society. But the combined effects of rationing and of income tax meant that life for the middle classes was far more austere than in the 1930s, while working-class living standards were higher. And successive crises highlighted divisions in the government and cast doubt on its competence, whether in running the coal industry or the whole economy.
The period 1945–8 in Britain can now be seen as one of some extraordinary achievements, the most important being the creation of the NHS. But for many of those living in Britain at the time it was an age of austerity, punctuated by regular crises. Wartime rationing not only continued, but its range was broadened.
The 1945 Labour victory was based on a broad popular wish to transform the equality of wartime sacrifice into a fairer peacetime society. But the combined effects of rationing and of income tax meant that life for the middle classes was far more austere than in the 1930s, while working-class living standards were higher. And successive crises highlighted divisions in the government and cast doubt on its competence, whether in running the coal industry or the whole economy.
212 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
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About the author
Marghanita Laski
36 books67 followersEnglish journalist, radio panelist, and novelist: she also wrote literary biography, plays, and short stories.
Laski was born to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals: Neville Laski was her father, Moses Gaster her grandfather, and socialist thinker Harold Laski her uncle. She was educated at Lady Barn House School and St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith. After a stint in fashion, she read English at Oxford, then married publisher John Howard, and worked in journalism. She began writing once her son and daughter were born.
A well-known critic as well as a novelist, she wrote books on Jane Austen and George Eliot. Ecstasy (1962) explored intense experiences, and Everyday Ecstasy (1974) their social effects. Her distinctive voice was often heard on the radio on The Brains Trust and The Critics; and she submitted a large number of illustrative quotations to the Oxford English Dictionary.
An avowed atheist, she was also a keen supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Her play, The Offshore Island, is about nuclear warfare.
Laski was born to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals: Neville Laski was her father, Moses Gaster her grandfather, and socialist thinker Harold Laski her uncle. She was educated at Lady Barn House School and St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith. After a stint in fashion, she read English at Oxford, then married publisher John Howard, and worked in journalism. She began writing once her son and daughter were born.
A well-known critic as well as a novelist, she wrote books on Jane Austen and George Eliot. Ecstasy (1962) explored intense experiences, and Everyday Ecstasy (1974) their social effects. Her distinctive voice was often heard on the radio on The Brains Trust and The Critics; and she submitted a large number of illustrative quotations to the Oxford English Dictionary.
An avowed atheist, she was also a keen supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Her play, The Offshore Island, is about nuclear warfare.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
July 27, 2023
Written at a time when the upper and middle classes were seeing their rights and privileges slowly going, while the working classes were enjoying better standards of living, this novel imagined the extreme of a Tory coup.
Five people have been stranded on an island after the war. When they are rescued and returned to England, they find a new regime in place. Society has been banded into five classes; the A's are at the top. Luckily for James, our main character, he does get graded an A. He went to the right public school, his parents are propertied, he knows the right people, and things were looking up for him. He goes to his ministry where he is looked after by Mr Featherstonehaugh (pronounced Fanshaw, a sure sign of an A would be an inexplicably spelt name), and when asked what he'd like to do with his life, says he'd really like to be a Man About Town. (This book is very funny in places). The B class are the middle classes, C's servants of the A's, D's are the working men and women, and the derelicts, tramps and intellectuals who weren't smart enough to pretend to be B's. James soon comes to realise that not everyone is totally happy with the new regime. Even his parents it seems would like to be allowed to associate with their former friends who are now B's. Maybe this new life isn't quite all it's cracked up to be.
Brilliantly done. It's hardly subtle, and it's more enjoyable if disbelief can be suspended. Just go with it.
Five people have been stranded on an island after the war. When they are rescued and returned to England, they find a new regime in place. Society has been banded into five classes; the A's are at the top. Luckily for James, our main character, he does get graded an A. He went to the right public school, his parents are propertied, he knows the right people, and things were looking up for him. He goes to his ministry where he is looked after by Mr Featherstonehaugh (pronounced Fanshaw, a sure sign of an A would be an inexplicably spelt name), and when asked what he'd like to do with his life, says he'd really like to be a Man About Town. (This book is very funny in places). The B class are the middle classes, C's servants of the A's, D's are the working men and women, and the derelicts, tramps and intellectuals who weren't smart enough to pretend to be B's. James soon comes to realise that not everyone is totally happy with the new regime. Even his parents it seems would like to be allowed to associate with their former friends who are now B's. Maybe this new life isn't quite all it's cracked up to be.
Brilliantly done. It's hardly subtle, and it's more enjoyable if disbelief can be suspended. Just go with it.
May 27, 2020
Why is that I put of Persephone books for years? I always end up really enjoying them. And this one was no different of course.
What a fantastic satire on the political landscape of post-WW2 Britain (and dare I say still as relevant in the year 2020 as it was during the 1940s?). Sharp, funny, fantastical, and full of loathsome characters - particularly the protagonist James. He is one you love to hate - haughty, privileged, and also very very stupid. This was such a good laugh, I knew Marghanita Laski wouldn't disappoint. I will need to continue working my way through her bibliography.
What a fantastic satire on the political landscape of post-WW2 Britain (and dare I say still as relevant in the year 2020 as it was during the 1940s?). Sharp, funny, fantastical, and full of loathsome characters - particularly the protagonist James. He is one you love to hate - haughty, privileged, and also very very stupid. This was such a good laugh, I knew Marghanita Laski wouldn't disappoint. I will need to continue working my way through her bibliography.
June 4, 2018
In his preface to this Persephone edition David Kynaston writes how in the immediate aftermath of the war and the election of Clement Atlee’s government many in the middle classes began to feel great discontent, no longer able to afford things they had taken for granted. They began, Kynaston tells us to want a return to the old sure Tory ways, that they had grown up with, with its strict social hierarchy.
The novel opens in 1945, five Britons have been stranded together for some years on an island in the Far East. They are a mixed bag, but have rubbed along fairly well together, despite a few petty jealousies and resentments. They manage to listen to the results of the 1945 General Election on the radio – and learn that a Socialist government has been elected. James, a traditional upper class young man is utterly horrified, as is Ughtred an elderly former civil servant, they can only imagine the world they will eventually arrive home to. Martin, a middle-class academic is delighted. Alongside these three are Penelope, the daughter of an Earl and Martin’s girlfriend, and Janice, a blonde beauty whose background no one seems to know much about. Having once managed to secure herself a double room at the Raffles Hotel, she generally comes up smelling of roses. James has had his eye on Janice – but she has made it quite clear she doesn’t return his interest. James offers up a kind of prayer that the dreaded socialists might be done away with.
‘“God, let it be as it might have been. Alter the clock, fix the election, do it any way you please, but let me see the England of all decent Conservatives’ dreams.”
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
The novel opens in 1945, five Britons have been stranded together for some years on an island in the Far East. They are a mixed bag, but have rubbed along fairly well together, despite a few petty jealousies and resentments. They manage to listen to the results of the 1945 General Election on the radio – and learn that a Socialist government has been elected. James, a traditional upper class young man is utterly horrified, as is Ughtred an elderly former civil servant, they can only imagine the world they will eventually arrive home to. Martin, a middle-class academic is delighted. Alongside these three are Penelope, the daughter of an Earl and Martin’s girlfriend, and Janice, a blonde beauty whose background no one seems to know much about. Having once managed to secure herself a double room at the Raffles Hotel, she generally comes up smelling of roses. James has had his eye on Janice – but she has made it quite clear she doesn’t return his interest. James offers up a kind of prayer that the dreaded socialists might be done away with.
‘“God, let it be as it might have been. Alter the clock, fix the election, do it any way you please, but let me see the England of all decent Conservatives’ dreams.”
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
April 17, 2018
Marghanita Laski's Tory Heaven or Thunder on the Right is one of the new Persephone titles for Spring 2018. Four of Laski's other novels have already been published by Persephone - The Victorian Chaise-Longue (number 6), Little Boy Lost (28), The Village (52), and To Bed with Grand Music (86). It seems entirely fitting for this newest Laski publication to appear in 2018; although the satirical novel first came out in 1948, many fascinating parallels can be drawn between it and the current governance of the 'dis-United Kingdom'.
Tory Heaven, as I shall refer to the novel from hereon in, has been prefaced by historian David Kynaston, the author of many books on British social history. Kynaston, as one would expect, begins his preface by recapping the feeling in Britain directly after the Second World War; the middle classes, no longer able to afford annual holidays and library subscriptions, found themselves 'increasingly aggrieved'. Kynaston writes of the middle class longing for the 'overthrow of Clement Atlee's government, and a return to the familiar Tory certainties of social hierarchy, of rigid class distinctions, and of almost unquestioned privilege and entitlement for those born on the right side of the tracks.'
In Tory Heaven, Laski 'bleakly imagines Britain under right-wing Tory rule, enduring a rigidly hierarchical system in which every citizen is graded A, B, C, D or E and only the As have any privileges: everyone else is downtrodden in varying degrees.' These five classes are later said to be those which society 'naturally comprises. Each class has, of course, its own distinctive outlook and way of life and, with those, different privileges and compensations. People like to know where they are, you see, and they like to know where other people are, too.' Laski chooses not to take a side in the tumultuous political conditions which she writes of; Kynaston believes that 'she is too subtle and elegant a writer to express her own horror at this grotesque turning back of the flock. Instead, like the best political satirists from Swift to Orwell, she leaves it entirely to others to draw out the lessons of her story. Or as Ralph Straus put it in the Sunday Times: "Conservatives with high blood pressure are advised not to read it."'
Tory Heaven opens: 'It is difficult after the passage of years to recall the precise emotions with which the population of England switched on their radio sets one summer evening in 1945 and prepared to hear that the Tories had won the General Election.' We are introduced, at this juncture, to five rather different characters, not all of whom are protagonists, but each one has been crafted for a very particular reason or outcome in the novel. These five are currently in Singapore, awaiting transport back to England. There is privileged James Leigh-Smith, the central character, and 'our hero', who drifts about from one place and one job to another; Martin Wetherall, academically brilliant, and in Singapore in order to 'study the effects of submarine blast on embryonic barnacle-geese'; Penelope Bosworth, the eldest daughter of an Earl, who has a lack of dowry and a 'mousy appearance', both prohibiting her from attracting a husband; Ughtred Thicknesse, born into a very old family who have lost all of their prior fortune; and Janice Brown, 'very blonde and very beautiful and chance remarks she let fall seemed to indicate that at the time of the debacle she had been staying at Raffles Hotel in a double room'.
James is shown as gloomy and disgruntled from the novel's outset. Laski writes: 'Ever since he'd left Oxford and started his enforced tour of the outposts of Empire, rude Colonials had everywhere failed to appreciate that they were being confronted with that perfect flowering of the class system, an English gentleman.' Soon after his musings about the lack of personal - and, he feels, prerogative - appreciation which exists around his person, he and the fellow four characters are transported back to England on that great bastion of Empire, the P&O liner. Much to James' delight - at the outset, at least - he is returned to a country in which he is the highest class of citizen. For the As, London is all clubs and tailors, pink gin and wingback armchairs, the best hotels and Sheraton desks. For the privileged class, England becomes old-fashioned and "proper", and James thinks it wonderful: 'In some peculiar way this new England seemed - not strange, but wholly familiar to him, like a dream so persistent in his subconscious that he welcomed it as part of himself.'
At first, a Labour victory is announced, but after ten days, the Tories take over. When he returns back to London, James becomes wholly satisfied, told as he is that: 'The one thing everyone had seemed anxious to assure him since was that whatever kind of government England now had, it wasn't a Socialist one.' In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, after James asked Ughtred what has happened to assure the new government's place, Laski writes: 'Apparently M.I.5 embarked on an anti-Communist drive in 1946, and being quite unable to distinguish between Intellectuals and Communists, cleared out both.' The group of politicians then joined up with M.I.5 and the police, named 'themselves finally and decisively the Tory party', and 'went into action'.
Tory Heaven is wickedly funny, and at its centre is such a clever idea. Laski, as always, writes fantastically, and each and every step of such a nightmare has been thought about and followed through. The ideas which are shown here, of a totalitarian government favouring their own kind and eschewing everyone else as not worthy, are as scary as they are familiar. They have, as James is told, 'elected to do away with all that nasty equality bosh'.
Through the framework which Laski has constructed, she is able to make use of a whole host of social problems entrenched within society. She demonstrates ways in which such a system is not at all favourable, even to those who find themselves within the privileged class. Thoughtful and engaging, witty and smart, and entirely shrewd in its depictions, Tory Heaven throws up so many valid questions about the way countries are governed, and the ways in which some people are treated as entirely different to others merely due to their ancestry, or their vast fortunes.
Tory Heaven, as I shall refer to the novel from hereon in, has been prefaced by historian David Kynaston, the author of many books on British social history. Kynaston, as one would expect, begins his preface by recapping the feeling in Britain directly after the Second World War; the middle classes, no longer able to afford annual holidays and library subscriptions, found themselves 'increasingly aggrieved'. Kynaston writes of the middle class longing for the 'overthrow of Clement Atlee's government, and a return to the familiar Tory certainties of social hierarchy, of rigid class distinctions, and of almost unquestioned privilege and entitlement for those born on the right side of the tracks.'
In Tory Heaven, Laski 'bleakly imagines Britain under right-wing Tory rule, enduring a rigidly hierarchical system in which every citizen is graded A, B, C, D or E and only the As have any privileges: everyone else is downtrodden in varying degrees.' These five classes are later said to be those which society 'naturally comprises. Each class has, of course, its own distinctive outlook and way of life and, with those, different privileges and compensations. People like to know where they are, you see, and they like to know where other people are, too.' Laski chooses not to take a side in the tumultuous political conditions which she writes of; Kynaston believes that 'she is too subtle and elegant a writer to express her own horror at this grotesque turning back of the flock. Instead, like the best political satirists from Swift to Orwell, she leaves it entirely to others to draw out the lessons of her story. Or as Ralph Straus put it in the Sunday Times: "Conservatives with high blood pressure are advised not to read it."'
Tory Heaven opens: 'It is difficult after the passage of years to recall the precise emotions with which the population of England switched on their radio sets one summer evening in 1945 and prepared to hear that the Tories had won the General Election.' We are introduced, at this juncture, to five rather different characters, not all of whom are protagonists, but each one has been crafted for a very particular reason or outcome in the novel. These five are currently in Singapore, awaiting transport back to England. There is privileged James Leigh-Smith, the central character, and 'our hero', who drifts about from one place and one job to another; Martin Wetherall, academically brilliant, and in Singapore in order to 'study the effects of submarine blast on embryonic barnacle-geese'; Penelope Bosworth, the eldest daughter of an Earl, who has a lack of dowry and a 'mousy appearance', both prohibiting her from attracting a husband; Ughtred Thicknesse, born into a very old family who have lost all of their prior fortune; and Janice Brown, 'very blonde and very beautiful and chance remarks she let fall seemed to indicate that at the time of the debacle she had been staying at Raffles Hotel in a double room'.
James is shown as gloomy and disgruntled from the novel's outset. Laski writes: 'Ever since he'd left Oxford and started his enforced tour of the outposts of Empire, rude Colonials had everywhere failed to appreciate that they were being confronted with that perfect flowering of the class system, an English gentleman.' Soon after his musings about the lack of personal - and, he feels, prerogative - appreciation which exists around his person, he and the fellow four characters are transported back to England on that great bastion of Empire, the P&O liner. Much to James' delight - at the outset, at least - he is returned to a country in which he is the highest class of citizen. For the As, London is all clubs and tailors, pink gin and wingback armchairs, the best hotels and Sheraton desks. For the privileged class, England becomes old-fashioned and "proper", and James thinks it wonderful: 'In some peculiar way this new England seemed - not strange, but wholly familiar to him, like a dream so persistent in his subconscious that he welcomed it as part of himself.'
At first, a Labour victory is announced, but after ten days, the Tories take over. When he returns back to London, James becomes wholly satisfied, told as he is that: 'The one thing everyone had seemed anxious to assure him since was that whatever kind of government England now had, it wasn't a Socialist one.' In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, after James asked Ughtred what has happened to assure the new government's place, Laski writes: 'Apparently M.I.5 embarked on an anti-Communist drive in 1946, and being quite unable to distinguish between Intellectuals and Communists, cleared out both.' The group of politicians then joined up with M.I.5 and the police, named 'themselves finally and decisively the Tory party', and 'went into action'.
Tory Heaven is wickedly funny, and at its centre is such a clever idea. Laski, as always, writes fantastically, and each and every step of such a nightmare has been thought about and followed through. The ideas which are shown here, of a totalitarian government favouring their own kind and eschewing everyone else as not worthy, are as scary as they are familiar. They have, as James is told, 'elected to do away with all that nasty equality bosh'.
Through the framework which Laski has constructed, she is able to make use of a whole host of social problems entrenched within society. She demonstrates ways in which such a system is not at all favourable, even to those who find themselves within the privileged class. Thoughtful and engaging, witty and smart, and entirely shrewd in its depictions, Tory Heaven throws up so many valid questions about the way countries are governed, and the ways in which some people are treated as entirely different to others merely due to their ancestry, or their vast fortunes.
July 11, 2021
This was such a clever story, funny, yet equally quite terrifying. This is my third Marghanita Laski novel from Persephone Books and I really enjoy her satirical writings. Tory Heaven is an imagined England of ‘old fashioned’ values, of hierarchy and religion and people happily knowing their places. BUT there are cracks and dissent in this authoritarian world. This novel is so current, yet was published in 1948 amid the post war political turmoils. There is a lot to take away from this story and reflect on (unless you are happily an A, that is) My only disappointment was in the rather abrupt ending, but this is still a story that like many Persephone books will need a couple of re-reads over the next few years.
July 2, 2022
This is the second book that I've read by Marghanita Laski and very enjoyable too!
This is a brilliant satire, written in 1948 and it's prescient too, considering our Tory Government's scary actions in the UK today (2022) - changing laws to aid themselves, having a complete disregard for the people they govern, wanting to change boundaries and the way we vote and thinking only how to better themselves. I could go on and on.
The story is sharp and witty and pokes fun at the establishment. I kept reading bits out to my husband. Definitely a book to reread.
This is a brilliant satire, written in 1948 and it's prescient too, considering our Tory Government's scary actions in the UK today (2022) - changing laws to aid themselves, having a complete disregard for the people they govern, wanting to change boundaries and the way we vote and thinking only how to better themselves. I could go on and on.
The story is sharp and witty and pokes fun at the establishment. I kept reading bits out to my husband. Definitely a book to reread.
October 1, 2025
An Inspector Calls who?
April 17, 2018
(Please note: Toasted English is published as Tory Heaven or Thunder on the Right in the United Kingdom, hence my use of the latter title.)
Marghanita Laski's Tory Heaven or Thunder on the Right is one of the new Persephone titles for Spring 2018. Four of Laski's other novels have already been published by Persephone - The Victorian Chaise-Longue (number 6), Little Boy Lost (28), The Village (52), and To Bed with Grand Music (86). It seems entirely fitting for this newest Laski publication to appear in 2018; although the satirical novel first came out in 1948, many fascinating parallels can be drawn between it and the current governance of the 'dis-United Kingdom'.
Tory Heaven, as I shall refer to the novel from hereon in, has been prefaced by historian David Kynaston, the author of many books on British social history. Kynaston, as one would expect, begins his preface by recapping the feeling in Britain directly after the Second World War; the middle classes, no longer able to afford annual holidays and library subscriptions, found themselves 'increasingly aggrieved'. Kynaston writes of the middle class longing for the 'overthrow of Clement Atlee's government, and a return to the familiar Tory certainties of social hierarchy, of rigid class distinctions, and of almost unquestioned privilege and entitlement for those born on the right side of the tracks.'
In Tory Heaven, Laski 'bleakly imagines Britain under right-wing Tory rule, enduring a rigidly hierarchical system in which every citizen is graded A, B, C, D or E and only the As have any privileges: everyone else is downtrodden in varying degrees.' These five classes are later said to be those which society 'naturally comprises. Each class has, of course, its own distinctive outlook and way of life and, with those, different privileges and compensations. People like to know where they are, you see, and they like to know where other people are, too.' Laski chooses not to take a side in the tumultuous political conditions which she writes of; Kynaston believes that 'she is too subtle and elegant a writer to express her own horror at this grotesque turning back of the flock. Instead, like the best political satirists from Swift to Orwell, she leaves it entirely to others to draw out the lessons of her story. Or as Ralph Straus put it in the Sunday Times: "Conservatives with high blood pressure are advised not to read it."'
Tory Heaven opens: 'It is difficult after the passage of years to recall the precise emotions with which the population of England switched on their radio sets one summer evening in 1945 and prepared to hear that the Tories had won the General Election.' We are introduced, at this juncture, to five rather different characters, not all of whom are protagonists, but each one has been crafted for a very particular reason or outcome in the novel. These five are currently in Singapore, awaiting transport back to England. There is privileged James Leigh-Smith, the central character, and 'our hero', who drifts about from one place and one job to another; Martin Wetherall, academically brilliant, and in Singapore in order to 'study the effects of submarine blast on embryonic barnacle-geese'; Penelope Bosworth, the eldest daughter of an Earl, who has a lack of dowry and a 'mousy appearance', both prohibiting her from attracting a husband; Ughtred Thicknesse, born into a very old family who have lost all of their prior fortune; and Janice Brown, 'very blonde and very beautiful and chance remarks she let fall seemed to indicate that at the time of the debacle she had been staying at Raffles Hotel in a double room'.
James is shown as gloomy and disgruntled from the novel's outset. Laski writes: 'Ever since he'd left Oxford and started his enforced tour of the outposts of Empire, rude Colonials had everywhere failed to appreciate that they were being confronted with that perfect flowering of the class system, an English gentleman.' Soon after his musings about the lack of personal - and, he feels, prerogative - appreciation which exists around his person, he and the fellow four characters are transported back to England on that great bastion of Empire, the P&O liner. Much to James' delight - at the outset, at least - he is returned to a country in which he is the highest class of citizen. For the As, London is all clubs and tailors, pink gin and wingback armchairs, the best hotels and Sheraton desks. For the privileged class, England becomes old-fashioned and "proper", and James thinks it wonderful: 'In some peculiar way this new England seemed - not strange, but wholly familiar to him, like a dream so persistent in his subconscious that he welcomed it as part of himself.'
At first, a Labour victory is announced, but after ten days, the Tories take over. When he returns back to London, James becomes wholly satisfied, told as he is that: 'The one thing everyone had seemed anxious to assure him since was that whatever kind of government England now had, it wasn't a Socialist one.' In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, after James asked Ughtred what has happened to assure the new government's place, Laski writes: 'Apparently M.I.5 embarked on an anti-Communist drive in 1946, and being quite unable to distinguish between Intellectuals and Communists, cleared out both.' The group of politicians then joined up with M.I.5 and the police, named 'themselves finally and decisively the Tory party', and 'went into action'.
Tory Heaven is wickedly funny, and at its centre is such a clever idea. Laski, as always, writes fantastically, and each and every step of such a nightmare has been thought about and followed through. The ideas which are shown here, of a totalitarian government favouring their own kind and eschewing everyone else as not worthy, are as scary as they are familiar. They have, as James is told, 'elected to do away with all that nasty equality bosh'.
Through the framework which Laski has constructed, she is able to make use of a whole host of social problems entrenched within society. She demonstrates ways in which such a system is not at all favourable, even to those who find themselves within the privileged class. Thoughtful and engaging, witty and smart, and entirely shrewd in its depictions, Tory Heaven throws up so many valid questions about the way countries are governed, and the ways in which some people are treated as entirely different to others merely due to their ancestry, or their vast fortunes.
Marghanita Laski's Tory Heaven or Thunder on the Right is one of the new Persephone titles for Spring 2018. Four of Laski's other novels have already been published by Persephone - The Victorian Chaise-Longue (number 6), Little Boy Lost (28), The Village (52), and To Bed with Grand Music (86). It seems entirely fitting for this newest Laski publication to appear in 2018; although the satirical novel first came out in 1948, many fascinating parallels can be drawn between it and the current governance of the 'dis-United Kingdom'.
Tory Heaven, as I shall refer to the novel from hereon in, has been prefaced by historian David Kynaston, the author of many books on British social history. Kynaston, as one would expect, begins his preface by recapping the feeling in Britain directly after the Second World War; the middle classes, no longer able to afford annual holidays and library subscriptions, found themselves 'increasingly aggrieved'. Kynaston writes of the middle class longing for the 'overthrow of Clement Atlee's government, and a return to the familiar Tory certainties of social hierarchy, of rigid class distinctions, and of almost unquestioned privilege and entitlement for those born on the right side of the tracks.'
In Tory Heaven, Laski 'bleakly imagines Britain under right-wing Tory rule, enduring a rigidly hierarchical system in which every citizen is graded A, B, C, D or E and only the As have any privileges: everyone else is downtrodden in varying degrees.' These five classes are later said to be those which society 'naturally comprises. Each class has, of course, its own distinctive outlook and way of life and, with those, different privileges and compensations. People like to know where they are, you see, and they like to know where other people are, too.' Laski chooses not to take a side in the tumultuous political conditions which she writes of; Kynaston believes that 'she is too subtle and elegant a writer to express her own horror at this grotesque turning back of the flock. Instead, like the best political satirists from Swift to Orwell, she leaves it entirely to others to draw out the lessons of her story. Or as Ralph Straus put it in the Sunday Times: "Conservatives with high blood pressure are advised not to read it."'
Tory Heaven opens: 'It is difficult after the passage of years to recall the precise emotions with which the population of England switched on their radio sets one summer evening in 1945 and prepared to hear that the Tories had won the General Election.' We are introduced, at this juncture, to five rather different characters, not all of whom are protagonists, but each one has been crafted for a very particular reason or outcome in the novel. These five are currently in Singapore, awaiting transport back to England. There is privileged James Leigh-Smith, the central character, and 'our hero', who drifts about from one place and one job to another; Martin Wetherall, academically brilliant, and in Singapore in order to 'study the effects of submarine blast on embryonic barnacle-geese'; Penelope Bosworth, the eldest daughter of an Earl, who has a lack of dowry and a 'mousy appearance', both prohibiting her from attracting a husband; Ughtred Thicknesse, born into a very old family who have lost all of their prior fortune; and Janice Brown, 'very blonde and very beautiful and chance remarks she let fall seemed to indicate that at the time of the debacle she had been staying at Raffles Hotel in a double room'.
James is shown as gloomy and disgruntled from the novel's outset. Laski writes: 'Ever since he'd left Oxford and started his enforced tour of the outposts of Empire, rude Colonials had everywhere failed to appreciate that they were being confronted with that perfect flowering of the class system, an English gentleman.' Soon after his musings about the lack of personal - and, he feels, prerogative - appreciation which exists around his person, he and the fellow four characters are transported back to England on that great bastion of Empire, the P&O liner. Much to James' delight - at the outset, at least - he is returned to a country in which he is the highest class of citizen. For the As, London is all clubs and tailors, pink gin and wingback armchairs, the best hotels and Sheraton desks. For the privileged class, England becomes old-fashioned and "proper", and James thinks it wonderful: 'In some peculiar way this new England seemed - not strange, but wholly familiar to him, like a dream so persistent in his subconscious that he welcomed it as part of himself.'
At first, a Labour victory is announced, but after ten days, the Tories take over. When he returns back to London, James becomes wholly satisfied, told as he is that: 'The one thing everyone had seemed anxious to assure him since was that whatever kind of government England now had, it wasn't a Socialist one.' In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, after James asked Ughtred what has happened to assure the new government's place, Laski writes: 'Apparently M.I.5 embarked on an anti-Communist drive in 1946, and being quite unable to distinguish between Intellectuals and Communists, cleared out both.' The group of politicians then joined up with M.I.5 and the police, named 'themselves finally and decisively the Tory party', and 'went into action'.
Tory Heaven is wickedly funny, and at its centre is such a clever idea. Laski, as always, writes fantastically, and each and every step of such a nightmare has been thought about and followed through. The ideas which are shown here, of a totalitarian government favouring their own kind and eschewing everyone else as not worthy, are as scary as they are familiar. They have, as James is told, 'elected to do away with all that nasty equality bosh'.
Through the framework which Laski has constructed, she is able to make use of a whole host of social problems entrenched within society. She demonstrates ways in which such a system is not at all favourable, even to those who find themselves within the privileged class. Thoughtful and engaging, witty and smart, and entirely shrewd in its depictions, Tory Heaven throws up so many valid questions about the way countries are governed, and the ways in which some people are treated as entirely different to others merely due to their ancestry, or their vast fortunes.
April 19, 2021
This is everything I want in a book. I feel like I know who the characters are and they feel like real people you’d recognise in the street. The story is easy to follow but has twists and turns. It’s so beautiful in the argument it puts across, I defy anyone to read this and not dislike the tory regime
August 1, 2020
Absolutely brilliant. Laski is just as clever a satirist as Jonathan Swift and once again we are in Nicola Beauman's debt for this reprint. Upon his return to England after being marooned on a distant island for years after WWII, James, a selfish, lazy and untalented son of the lower echelons of the upper classes, is delighted to find that the Tories are in power again and have set up the society of his dreams. Instead of having to make a living, he is actually paid to be a man-about-town. The new society is divided into 5 strata. People like James, who are issued with an A disc, enjoy all privileges. B people are essentially the middle class. C people are butlers and other servants who revere their A masters but also keep an eye on them and make sure they stick to every old-fashioned English custom, whether they like it or not. D people are the trade unionists, and E is left for the "riffraff", including intellectuals who are the major victims of this new system because, then as now, they are perceived as a threat and not an asset. At first James thrives in this new order set up, like every such system, to reward brainless people prepared to put up with anything as long as they themselves do well. How sinister this apparently rather benign dictatorship is becomes gradually apparent and it is one of the many strengths of this book that it becomes ever more suspenseful as James is reunited with the 4 people he spent his exile with and fails to realize that none of them are prepared to condone the new regime. A more timely book would be hard to find. Go spread the word!
June 17, 2021
A satirical novel set just after World War II. James Leigh-Smith and four others return to England having been living on an island through most of the war, to find the recently-elected Labour government has been overthrown by an ultra-conservative one. Society is now organised strictly along traditional class lines, and fraternising is forbidden. James, finding himself graded A and entitled to an unearned income among other things, is delighted, but others are not so fortunate. Engagements must be broken off, jobs must be abandoned, and one of his island-mates has been graded E - intellectuals, the lowest of the low. An amusing read.
August 16, 2018
Magnificent. I recognised the Britain I live in at many points in this story of “Tory Heaven”, and was horrified. It was published in 1948 and the parallels with the way politics/social issues have been going in recent history are nothing short of astonishing. It’s a compelling read and very funny in places. But a warning shot nonetheless.
August 1, 2020
Galloped through this in one day. What would society look like if the (1940s British) Conservatives had their way? Eminently readable and just the sort of speculative story I’ve seemed to like most in these near-apocalyptic days.
February 18, 2024
Thoroughly enjoyed this very funny book, in which ultra right wing conservatives launch a coup and set about constructing a hierarchical world (which is always with the free market people, turns out to involve a lot of state intervention and social engineering).
In the process a lot of people discover they don't like the old world as much as they thought they did.
Interestingly, the book this most reminded me of was Samuel R. Delaney's Triton, which is also about a young man unhappy in utopia. And that's why I didn't like the ending of Tory Heaven, in which the protagonist is kicked out. Delany's solution, in which he funds the place he thinks is perfect for him, *and is still miserable* is much more effective.
In the process a lot of people discover they don't like the old world as much as they thought they did.
Interestingly, the book this most reminded me of was Samuel R. Delaney's Triton, which is also about a young man unhappy in utopia. And that's why I didn't like the ending of Tory Heaven, in which the protagonist is kicked out. Delany's solution, in which he funds the place he thinks is perfect for him, *and is still miserable* is much more effective.
January 24, 2025
Starts strongly as an ideal foil for the nonsense that is Brideshead's Revisited and it is interesting to explore from the point of view from the antagonist. The story does lose it's way a little towards the end but still leaves room for some timeless satire about British politics.
September 15, 2025
bitingly readable
January 26, 2020
This satire was first published in 1948, but if I didn't know that, I'd have guessed that it was published last year. (In fact, it was republished by Persephone in 2018.)
The plot follows five people who, having been marooned on a desert island for some years, and return to England in 1945 to find it transformed into "the England of all decent Conservatives' dreams."
The country is divided along strict class lines, with every citizen receiving one of five Government-assigned grades, and required to live in accordance with what would be expected of their class. The novel primarily focuses on the experiences of the privileged James Leigh-Smith (indistinguishable from Jacob Rees-Mogg), and largely leaves the reader to fill in the blanks and draw the moral lessons.
This was a really easy and fun read with a clearly enduring underlying message.
The plot follows five people who, having been marooned on a desert island for some years, and return to England in 1945 to find it transformed into "the England of all decent Conservatives' dreams."
The country is divided along strict class lines, with every citizen receiving one of five Government-assigned grades, and required to live in accordance with what would be expected of their class. The novel primarily focuses on the experiences of the privileged James Leigh-Smith (indistinguishable from Jacob Rees-Mogg), and largely leaves the reader to fill in the blanks and draw the moral lessons.
This was a really easy and fun read with a clearly enduring underlying message.
January 2, 2023
I chose to read this book for the quirky reason that one of the characters in my current work in progress stumbles upon a new colleague in the closed stacks reading Marghanita Laski’s later book, The Victorian Chaise-longue. I wanted the colleague to be worried that she would get into trouble for reading during working hours, but then for it to turn out that both of them love Laski, and for it to be a bit of social bonding for them.
I chose Tory Heaven because based on the blurb I could imagine my young Sociology Librarian wanting to read it, and then was surprised to find that I myself really enjoyed it.
The book is social satire, based on an alternative history in which instead of the Labour Party coming into power after World War II, the Conservatives end up winning the general election and then overturning the social order (and a good number of electoral reforms) so that Britain’s class system becomes codified in law, with people classified A-E.
We see the new regime through the eyes of five returnees to the island who were delayed in their journey back to their homeland after the War. Mostly the story centred on James Leigh-Smith (classified A), his friend Ughtred (A) and Penelope (A) but we also see him grappling with the classification of his former companions Martin (whom he dislikes) and Janice (for whom he carries a torch) classified as E (the lowest of the low) and the threat of his sister marrying the man she loves, who is a B, and his parents applying to reclassify from A to B, partly to be allowed to still see their daughter and partly to continue their regular games of bridge with their former neighbours and friends who were automatically classified B because Jewish. (Laski, herself a Jewish socialist, tells us in her narrative that the only Jews classified A are the Rothschilds and a few other select families of equal wealth and status).
It’s a novel that is scarily relatable today. We may not be carrying around discs marking us as A-E, but in the current fuel situation, there is a marked difference between those able and those unable to heat our homes this winter.
Political satire isn’t usually my choice, but I’m really glad to have read this one, and I will definitely be reading Laski’s other satirical novels. There’s clearly a lot more to her work than the modern gothic I enjoyed (and which is much more my usual sort of read) in The Victorian Chaise-longue.
Three Word Review: No-one’s heaven, really.
I chose Tory Heaven because based on the blurb I could imagine my young Sociology Librarian wanting to read it, and then was surprised to find that I myself really enjoyed it.
The book is social satire, based on an alternative history in which instead of the Labour Party coming into power after World War II, the Conservatives end up winning the general election and then overturning the social order (and a good number of electoral reforms) so that Britain’s class system becomes codified in law, with people classified A-E.
We see the new regime through the eyes of five returnees to the island who were delayed in their journey back to their homeland after the War. Mostly the story centred on James Leigh-Smith (classified A), his friend Ughtred (A) and Penelope (A) but we also see him grappling with the classification of his former companions Martin (whom he dislikes) and Janice (for whom he carries a torch) classified as E (the lowest of the low) and the threat of his sister marrying the man she loves, who is a B, and his parents applying to reclassify from A to B, partly to be allowed to still see their daughter and partly to continue their regular games of bridge with their former neighbours and friends who were automatically classified B because Jewish. (Laski, herself a Jewish socialist, tells us in her narrative that the only Jews classified A are the Rothschilds and a few other select families of equal wealth and status).
It’s a novel that is scarily relatable today. We may not be carrying around discs marking us as A-E, but in the current fuel situation, there is a marked difference between those able and those unable to heat our homes this winter.
Political satire isn’t usually my choice, but I’m really glad to have read this one, and I will definitely be reading Laski’s other satirical novels. There’s clearly a lot more to her work than the modern gothic I enjoyed (and which is much more my usual sort of read) in The Victorian Chaise-longue.
Three Word Review: No-one’s heaven, really.
March 15, 2024
Five people - James, Ughtred, Janice, Penelope and Martin - have been have been stranded together on a desert island for five years when they hear on a radio that a new government has been elected in England. We don’t find out much about their island life as they are rescued shortly after the book opens and return by ship to what they think is a Socialist England. Not surprisingly, public school educated, James is awarded the highest rank of ‘A’ under a ‘Tory Heaven’.
We stick with James as he explores life as an A under the new regime, all of which he embraces and questions very little, but is nonetheless confused by his good fortune. First of all he chooses the expected occupation, that of Man-About-Town. He is given money, eats good food and drink, joins a Club and benefits from other perks including central London lodgings and a car, which are all very welcome - he has been stranded on a desert island after all. On a visit to his parents in Surrey, however, he finds that they are now quite unhappy with their lives. They are also ‘As’ but for them this means they are being forced to live in a traditional way dictated by the government; to stick to their rank, employ servants, dress for dinner and attend church on Sundays in top hat and tails.
Ughtred is also an A and meets up with James several times - he is older and wiser and sees many of the pitfalls of the regime but Janice and Martin are much further down the social scale and he is not allowed to mix with them (but he does see Janice in court being downgraded from C to E). When he sees Penelope again, she is an A, and he decides he wants to marry her. But there are several hoops to go though under the new regime and it is less than straightforward. At a house party where the guests are expected to canvas for the Tory candidate, James bumps into Martin and Janice who he thinks are a couple and he sees his way for clear with Penelope now that Martin is out of the picture. Eventually, James is duped into giving away his A gold disc, and Penelope who has been leading him along, uses him and elopes with Martin, for which James is stripped of his A status for associating with people outside his class.
An odd, but thought provoking scenario. I found James’s stupidity annoying, but I realise this is a necessary trait given what Laski is exploring. The ending is rushed and a bit disappointing. I honestly thought James was going to wake up from a nightmare, but this doesn’t happen. I found him quite an odd character, superficial and not all that bright in the way that he goes along with everything.
We stick with James as he explores life as an A under the new regime, all of which he embraces and questions very little, but is nonetheless confused by his good fortune. First of all he chooses the expected occupation, that of Man-About-Town. He is given money, eats good food and drink, joins a Club and benefits from other perks including central London lodgings and a car, which are all very welcome - he has been stranded on a desert island after all. On a visit to his parents in Surrey, however, he finds that they are now quite unhappy with their lives. They are also ‘As’ but for them this means they are being forced to live in a traditional way dictated by the government; to stick to their rank, employ servants, dress for dinner and attend church on Sundays in top hat and tails.
Ughtred is also an A and meets up with James several times - he is older and wiser and sees many of the pitfalls of the regime but Janice and Martin are much further down the social scale and he is not allowed to mix with them (but he does see Janice in court being downgraded from C to E). When he sees Penelope again, she is an A, and he decides he wants to marry her. But there are several hoops to go though under the new regime and it is less than straightforward. At a house party where the guests are expected to canvas for the Tory candidate, James bumps into Martin and Janice who he thinks are a couple and he sees his way for clear with Penelope now that Martin is out of the picture. Eventually, James is duped into giving away his A gold disc, and Penelope who has been leading him along, uses him and elopes with Martin, for which James is stripped of his A status for associating with people outside his class.
An odd, but thought provoking scenario. I found James’s stupidity annoying, but I realise this is a necessary trait given what Laski is exploring. The ending is rushed and a bit disappointing. I honestly thought James was going to wake up from a nightmare, but this doesn’t happen. I found him quite an odd character, superficial and not all that bright in the way that he goes along with everything.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 5, 2022
There is a fair bit of derogatory language and slurs used in this book but, as a Jewish woman living in the late 1940’s it all stems from Laski’s lived experience and does well to present the A class as being no better than the Nazi’s. My only other minor complaint is that I would have liked to see some more development in James and Penelope’s relationship but that lack of development does also help to show how superficial his ‘love’ for her is and that he only wants her because his class means he can have her. Other character relationships are quick to spring up but feel relatively well fleshed out and serve the plot. James as a main character and the way that he interacts with everyone else was an excellent choice as it directly targets the upper class people who are most likely to be dogmatic in their Conservative views but very cleverly shows how even they wouldn’t be happy in this ‘ideal’ system. Even when looking at the working class Conservatives, it shows how they are manipulated and fooled into thinking that the Tory party is working for them when really they are doing the bare minimum and repressing the lowest classes so that they do not get a say in changing the system. Overall, Laski does an excellent job of portraying how awful a ‘Tory Heaven’ would be- a fact which is increasingly relevant to read about today.
January 18, 2022
Before I started this book, I had my doubts on whether or not I could understand it enough to enjoy reading it. I am not a native English speaker and dystopian fiction usually has subtleties that I feared I would not be able to pick up on. Apart from that, I don't live in England and am only familiar with the class system from hearsay. However, the book begins with five people on a deserted island living in isolation, away from any news on said dystopia. This way I could easily follow along as James and the others return to a changed England and receive pretty clear and explicit information on how the world works since the start of the new régime. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that I got the humor, I got what was being described and I enjoyed the wry results of what was supposedly a better society, because hey, it's what everybody would naturally want! I really enjoyed this book, sympathised with the characters and occasionally snorted out loud while reading. I heartily recommend it.
Do buy books at Persephone Books!
Do buy books at Persephone Books!
July 21, 2023
This book is brilliantly presented. Every page drips with satire but the world-building is incredibly convincing as to what a 'Tory heaven' could be conceived as. It's a very clever plot-line and clearly sets out the message of how such a system would not work. I thought it was very clever to have everything seen through the eyes of James and watch how he is taken advantage of by a system he took for granted. The lives of the different classes are conveyed very well and Laski clearly doesn't care for romanticising post-war Britain like so many other authors do. The post-war setting is also good for laying the foundations for people in the A class (like James' parents) to become discontent because they have been exposed to the other side of life. It's short and skims over some plotlines but I don't see that as a downside as Laski's points are clearly made and they still have an impact. Overall, a very satisfying plot and is just really good at taking the piss out of people like James whilst conveying the horror of such a system. 9/10
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 7, 2025
A totally delightful read that's both a novel of manners and a political novel full of portent in this day and age. I confess that I totally wanted to be an A, but the idea of being oppressed by one's servants demanding that one play Downton Abbey in full costume was a damper, not to mention the more horrific implications.
Beautifully drawn characters who are both incredibly real and archetypes, wonderful scene setting and descriptions, snappy dialog, all comprising a straightforward narrative that is also a vicious satire. It is very funny - a sort of dystopian Wodehouse.
Tory Heaven reminds you that any ideology taken to its limit becomes both ridiculous and frightening at the same time. Let's see how far the current enthusiasm runs unchecked before full awareness starts to set in. It's certainly off to a good start.
Beautifully drawn characters who are both incredibly real and archetypes, wonderful scene setting and descriptions, snappy dialog, all comprising a straightforward narrative that is also a vicious satire. It is very funny - a sort of dystopian Wodehouse.
Tory Heaven reminds you that any ideology taken to its limit becomes both ridiculous and frightening at the same time. Let's see how far the current enthusiasm runs unchecked before full awareness starts to set in. It's certainly off to a good start.
December 16, 2023
I have enjoyed everything I’ve read of Marghanita Laski. This witty fantasy (published in 1948) is about a Tory electoral triumph that leads to a new regime that encodes upper middle class privileges in law, stabilizing and enforcing the class system. This is ostensibly a benign rule and a best-of-all-possible world, but there will be no mixing of the classes! Our hero, James Leigh-Smith, is a twit who falls afoul of the new government, because, although he loves his A-class privileges, he also wants to do what he likes, when and how he likes which does not wash with the new powers that be. I think some of the humor may have been lost on me as I’m not British and was not alive in the immediate post-war period. But I still laughed and enjoyed Laski’s Tory Heaven thoroughly.
January 8, 2021
Tory Heaven - Marghanita Laski
This book was absolutely fascinating, my first read from persephone books. Set in an alternative Britain, where instead of pursuing left wing goals after World War 2, an extreme ‘Tory’ state has been created. Every member of society is assigned a strict ‘grade’ based on their social background, with ‘A’ members of society being the aristocracy and upper classes, and ‘E’ members of society living in abject poverty. We follow James as he returns from his travel abroad and navigates the new régime. Ultimately, this book was so fascinating. I highly recommend this book!
This book was absolutely fascinating, my first read from persephone books. Set in an alternative Britain, where instead of pursuing left wing goals after World War 2, an extreme ‘Tory’ state has been created. Every member of society is assigned a strict ‘grade’ based on their social background, with ‘A’ members of society being the aristocracy and upper classes, and ‘E’ members of society living in abject poverty. We follow James as he returns from his travel abroad and navigates the new régime. Ultimately, this book was so fascinating. I highly recommend this book!
October 24, 2023
So easy to read and so familiar on how the British class system operates. First published in 1948, it sets out a system that tells how acquiescing to the class system is essential to maintain your privileged role within it. It shows how the ‘Tories never liked the dole’, ‘paying the able bodied man to be idle’ so they abolished the dole and revived the Parish Relief. And how the very idea of a Tory government can never co-exist with a free press. But so much more besides …
Plus ça change, plus la même chose …
Plus ça change, plus la même chose …
March 28, 2020
A biting satire contemplating an extreme conservative government in the aftermath of WWII, that brings back a traditional English class-system, but to its logical extreme. Our anti-hero, James (of impoverished toff background) suddenly finds all of his dreams have come true. . . but is the new social order as perfect for him as it first appears?
A fun read and just the right length (any longer and it would have started to drag).
A fun read and just the right length (any longer and it would have started to drag).
August 13, 2025
Very amusing book , written as a criticism of those among the English upper classes who objected to the societal and financial changes following the Second World War.
The most ironic feature is how many of the attitudes regarding class , nostalgia etc remain true today in England.
I plan to read more of her books.
The most ironic feature is how many of the attitudes regarding class , nostalgia etc remain true today in England.
I plan to read more of her books.
August 7, 2022
Fascinating insight into what could be in the not too far away speculation of a right wing Tory government. Unbelievable to think this was written in 1948 when there are still so many parallels to be drawn
August 6, 2018
Really liked the story to start with. Not to keen on the ending though.
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