Much Married Man » (Bargain)

Nicholas Coleridge, a former newspaper columnist and editor of Harpers & Queen, is now U.K. Managing Director of Condé Nast magazines. His bestselling novels have been published in twelve languages. He lives in London and Worcestershire with his family.

From one of the sharpest observers of the modern scene comes this witty, intelligent, and irresistible novel in the tradition of Gosford Park and Snobs.

Anthony Anscombe has everything he could ever want: an exquisite family estate, enviable social standing, and a desirable inheritance. But Anthony still has an aching desire for one thing: the perfect match. Running headlong into marriage is Anthony’s forte . . . and his greatest weakness. As he surveys his beautiful house in the English countryside, Anthony has the distinct feeling that he’s under siege. He may be surrounded by his sprawling estate, but lurking in the village are more than one or two reminders of his complicated past, including three ex-wives, a mistress, and a legion of children and stepchildren, all dependent on him and all determined to do whatever it takes to get what they want.

A Much Married Man is a wickedly funny social satire with characters that will stay with readers long after the final page. Like a modern-day Edith Wharton or Anthony Trollope, Nicholas Coleridge delivers a sensational glimpse inside the salacious world of the upper classes.

Publishers Weekly

Britain's moneyed upper crust comes in for a slapstick razzing in this class-skewering 10th book (after novels Godchildrenand Streetsmart) by Condé Nast U.K. managing director Coleridge. The titular much-married man is Anthony Anscombe, the thoroughly decent but naïvely innocent scion of a private English merchant bank family, who also happens to be a country squire responsible for the well-being of a picturesque village and 2,000 acres of "magical" land to which his family has held title for 370 years. The eccentric locals love Anthony, and Anthony loves haplessly: over four decades, he marries three unsuitable women, sires five children and shepherds five stepchildren through turbulent upbringings. Aside from his bank duties, which provide ample fodder for Coleridge's wry satire, Anthony is called upon to undertake a load of unpleasant chores, such as confronting his philandering father-in-law at the latter's "floating lovenest" and defending his rapist stepson, Morad. Throughout, Anthony remains the epitome of a gentleman, unfailingly patient with the demanding women in his life (the first a diva waif, the second a priggish homebody and the third a monstrous money-grubber). This well-informed comedy of stiff-upper-lip manners reads, charmingly, as if sprung from a writerly union between Iris Murdoch at the high end and Harold Robbins at the low. (June)