A Christmas Garland

At the height of his powers in 1912, with the splendour of Zuleika Dobson (released the previous year) still glowing, Max Beerbohm was able to place a crowning seal upon his reputation as a parodist. Collecting together eight pieces which had already graced the pages of the Saturday Review, he wove in a further nine to create a compendium of brilliance in the art. No major writer of the times was safe from what he called his 'sedulous aping': Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Thomas Hardy, John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad, Hilaire Belloc, George Bernard Shaw and several others had their styles examined, their peccadilloes exposed and their failings exaggerated. All of the fondly pilloried were still alive, and so able to taste to the full the master's zest. Each of these pieces revolves in some form around the Christmas season, with scenarios ranging from the capture of Santa Claus as a miscreant by an overzealous police constable (Kipling), to a hoary traveller finding himself the subject of the 'Christmas dinner' of a tropical tribe (Conrad). In all of them a literary great is adroitly harpooned, and we are thoroughly entertained.