Few writers have given greater enjoyment to their contemporaries than Sir Compton Mackenzie. Since his first novel, The Passionate Elopement, was published in 1911 he has written more than a hundred books covering so many different aspects of life - from cats to music and religion, from Greece to Prince Charlie - that his versatility has at times bemused and offended critics. He has travelled widely - he has a particularly affection for Greece where he spent three years in the Secret Service during the First World War - and had lived on the island of Capri and in the Lot district of France for some time. Of his forty novels, Kenneth Young, author of this informative and discerning essay, believes that 'at least half a dozen' are built to last. These will undoubtedly include Carnival, Sinister Street, Guy and Pauline, the well-loved farce, Whisky Galore, and perhaps Santa Claus in Summer, one of his many stories for children. His literary judgments have been perceptive: in Literature in My Time (1933) he already recognized the importance of T. S. Eliot and James Joyce, whose Ulysses was still banned in England. 'He has become the Grand Old Man of English letters and is once more appreciated by discerning critics as he has always been by millions of readers at home and abroad ... He has written so variously about such varied people - and always warmly - that he may come to be seen as the Dickens of his time, a man of almost universal insight and sympathies.' So Kenneth Young concludes his highly enjoyable account of one of the best-loved writers of our time.