C. P. Snow, A Coat of Varnish

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A Coat of Varnish

(1979) was C. P. Snow’s seventeenth and last novel and it has a detective story element which echoes his first,

Death Under Sail

(1932). This time, however, the murder takes place, not on a yacht on the Norfolk Broads as it did in

Death Under Sail

, but in one of those privileged enclaves in which Snow took particular interest in his fiction and his life. In his previous novels, the enclaves were either formed by social and political dissidents, as in

George Passant

(1940) and

The Malcontents

(1972), or by institutions – a Cambridge college in

The Masters

(1951) and

The Affair

(1960), the House of Lords in

In Their Wisdom

(1974). In

A Coat of Varnish

, however, the enclave is residential rather than ideological or institutional: much of the novel is set in and around…

1540 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "A Coat of Varnish". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 October 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=19414, accessed 19 March 2024.]

19414 A Coat of Varnish 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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