The Go-Between is a modern classic, published in 1953, and almost forgotten nowadays. It begins with one of the most famous opening lines in literature – “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The novel takes us back to when our narrator, Leo, was twelve years old, hopelessly naive but conscious of a world of many mysteries. Invited to the grand manor of a school-friend, he is brutally introduced to his own social inferiority. But he has a role as messenger boy for his friend’s sister, Marian. Sworn to total secrecy, he carries her letters to her forbidden working-class lover. This is a beautiful novel about class, Englishness and social propriety, as well as Leo’s discovery of the facts of life around and within him.
This novel was also a 1971 film, with a cast which included Julie Christie, Michael Redgrave, Edward Fox and Alan Bates. It was also a 2015 BBC TV film (image above) with actors including Vanessa Redgrave and Jim Broadbent.
Leslie Poles Hartley was from Cambridgeshire. He published five collections of short stories and some seventeen novels, as well as other essays and poems. He died in 1972 aged 77. And yes, I’m afraid his middle name really was ‘Poles.’
Acclaim for this novel included the Heinemann Award in 1954. Hartley was appointed a CBE in 1956 and he was named a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1972.
This novel was suggested to me by an article in the Guardian (infuriatingly, now vanished). It summarised one journalist’s choice of novels that everyone should read before they die!
