The Middlemen: A Satire

It is the sixties in the century of middlemen. Meet the cast: Rusty Conway Chief Public Relations Officer of U.V.I a company whose dress fabrics manufactured from sand and saltpetre have an unfortunate tendency to explode; Serena Scott-Buttery Rustys beleaguered psychoanalyst desperate to slink up the property ladder and fend off menacing contractors mortgagors and TV producers; Serenas sister Stella a flamboyant Euro-hopping leech whose affectations test Serenas patience; Sales Promotion manager Harry Thorpe with his carefully preserved Yorkshire accent; and Hughie Hill producer of Focus on Facts. The last of Brooke-Roses realist novels published in 1961 The Middlemen is a scathing social critique and hilarious satire as well as a telling portent as to how the emerging decades would develop. Introduction by Francis Booth.