Mr Finchley Takes the Road

Book 3 of the classic trilogy of humorous rural adventures through pre-war England. Mr. Finchley takes a fancy to a horse-drawn caravan that he sees for sale, but his new wife does not relish the prospect of a caravan journey so goes to visit her brother while he sets out to explore Kent and go house-hunting. He has various mishaps while learning to handle the horse and the caravan, and encounters an array of scroungers, eccentrics and country characters and sees several unsuitable houses. Meanwhile other people are showing an unnatural interest in his caravan. It gradually emerges that it contains a secret, and in the ensuing mayhem, Mr. Finchley is imprisoned in an empty house from which he is rescued by the enterprise of his wife. The house he is rescued from turns out to be on the market and just right for them. Jerome K. Jerome meets Mr Bean in this gentle comedy series, which was a runaway bestseller on first publication in the 1930s and retains a timeless appeal today. It has been dramatised twice for BBC Radio, with the 1990 series regularly repeated. AUTHOR: Victor Canning was a prolific writer throughout his career, which began young: he had sold several short stories by the age of nineteen and his first novel, Mr Finchley Discovers His England (1934) was published when he was twenty-three. Canning also wrote for children: his trilogy The Runaways was adapted for US children's television. Canning's later thrillers were darker and more complex than his earlier work and received further critical acclaim.