C

First published in 1924, C is arguably Maurice Baring's most famous book and best novel. In it, Baring looks back affectionately, to what he calls, the 'golden swan-song of European life before the First World War', drawing a picture of exclusive family life clouded only by the distant rumblings of the Boer War. Against this pageant of an age, Baring presents Caryl Bramsley (the 'C' of the title), a young man of great promise, of culture but not achievement, an aspiring writer, whose life is a tragi-comic 'conflict of values'.