Jane Gardam's beloved Old Filth Trilogy-including her masterpiece, Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat; and Last Friends-are here presented in one volume.
Emotionally distant but highly successful Edward Feathers, aka Old Filth, a man who his beautiful wife Betty, and his devilishly handsome professional rival (and Betty's onetime lover) Edward Veneering are the anchors of this series, with each novel focusing on a different character. Feathers was a "raj orphan"-children born in Far East British colonies and raised in England-while Veneering managed to get out of his fishing village-turned-industrial-town just before the German bombs dropped (and his luck has held up pretty well ever since).
The three tells a bittersweet tale of enduring friendship while contending with the disappointments and consolations of age, while a once-insurmountable empire declines around them. It forms a deeply humane and often comic portrait of aging, and a reminder that the experiences we choose to take with us in our twilight years are as unpredictable as life itself.
