Vintage Stuff

Tom Sharpe

Jun 2011 · Random House

About this ebook

Peregrine Roderick Clyde-Brown is a bumbling, naive and savagely dim-witted teenager, who, as his name reveals, cannot possibly be exposed to the evils of a comprehensive school. However, with his penchant for taking even the most innocent command literally, no reputable school will accept the boy who, when told that he must turn over a new leaf, begins fondling the foliage.

His parents, with high hopes and a considerable amount of bribery money, search for anywhere that will take their 'late developer.' In a school that time forgot, Peregrine's 'talents' for taking orders and having no discernible individual thought seem perfect for a promising career in the upper ranks of the British Army. It is at Groxbourne that Peregrine meets Mr Gladstone, a man whose teaching style extends as far as using lashings to teach arithmetic. After Gladstone whisks the unquestioning boy off on a hysterical mystery, Peregrine ends up storming a French castle, where he unwaveringly commits mischief, mayhem and even murder!

Ratings and reviews

I have read all of Tom Sharpe's books and Vintage Stuff is one of his best. The comic style in which he normally handles language, plot and characters is probably at its best in this book. The book lends heavily on the English public school system (as do some of his other books). The plot concerns the adventures of a school-master and one of his students as they are induced on a crazy journey through England and France—all due to the schemes of another school master seeking revenge. The pathos of the school-master who would like to think he is in charge but of course isn't, is handled very nicely by the author. Like all of Sharpe's books, the journey is the reward as most endings tend to be a little anti-climactic (but by then you are satisfied-enough not to care). If you like a well-written comic adventure, you can't go wrong with this book.

Laugh out loud funny

About the author

Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his national service in the Marines before going to South Africa in 1951, where he did social work before teaching in Natal. He had a photographic studio in Pietermaritzburg from 1957 until 1961, and from 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology.

He is the author of sixteen bestselling novels, including Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape which were serialised on television, and Wilt which was made into a film. In 1986 he was awarded the XXIIIème Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret and in 2010 he received the inaugural BBK La Risa de Bilbao Prize. Tom Sharpe died in June 2013 at his home in northern Spain.