What's Hidden Beneath The Manor House? 'The Warlow Experiment'
What happens when one person controls the fate of many? Ghastly experiments like the one Alix Nathan lays out in her new novel, about a country gentleman who aspires to scientific prominence.
What is lurking beneath Herbert Powyss' house?
That's the question at the center of British author Alix Nathan's novel, The Warlow Experiment. Powyss is a country gentleman. He prefers gardens and books to people; spends his days designing hothouses for his estate, growing exotic seeds, grafting pear trees and submitting minor horticultural findings to the world's preeminent scientific body, the Royal Society.
He lives surrounded by the ancient woodlands of the Welsh Marches and talks to his servants only long enough to give them a word or two of an order. He dines is now in the hands of England's laboring classes. Watch out, warns Powyss' old friend, England may be next to see its hierarchies overthrown.
