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Mr George Scott’s Time and Place is a semi-autobiographical analysis of the influences which he believes have contributed towards the formation of a new kind of hero in everyday life—echoes of whom are to be found in fiction—and also of the state of contemporary society in Britain. He posits an imaginary, composite hero—alluding to Mr Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim as an indicator—whose passions are ended before he starts on his journey; who distrusts his own intellectual pretensions and emotions even more than those of others; one who is ‘fearful above all of not being “wide” enough to forestall delusion’ and who ‘is forced back into the defence of laughter, at himself and at the world’. And if he finds within himself ‘any weakling inclination towards constructive ideas for the world, for “crusades” or any phoney nonsense of that kind, then he must secrete them in some dark cellar lest the neighbours discover them and subject him to ridicule.... He brings with him the supposed coarseness of the hobnailed navvy and the Teddy Boy’s fear of being thought soft.’
This is a convenient and, probably, to some extent, true analysis of certain kinds of people with whom most of us are familiar. Whether or not they are to be regarded as heroes in reality the next fifty or hundred years may demonstrate; and whether or not they are likely to be interesting as fictional heroes it is also a little early to forecast. So far it would seem otherwise.
