The Music on the Hill; The Cobweb; The Interlopers; The Hounds of Fear

Written by Saki

Narrated by Patrick Barlow

Saki was the pen-name of Hector Hugh Munro. One of the wittiest of all short-story writers, he was born in 1870 in Burma where his father, a Scots army officer, was stationed. He was one when the family returned to England to live in North Devon. When his mother died his father, returning to serve in India, put Hector and his brothers and sisters into the care of his own mother and two sisters. The children’s childhood with their aunts was miserable. The aunts hated each other, quarrelled fiercely, and bullied the children mentally. They saw little of other children, and Hector’s main enjoyment was drawing. After some tuition with a governess he went to school in Exmouth, and later to Bedford Grammar School. In 1886 his father retired . A kindly man, he took the children to Normandy, to Dresden, to Prague , and to Davos, where they rode, climbed and played tennis, and Hector took lessons in pastel from a painter of birds of prey. As a young man, Hector went as a Police Official to Burma, but returned after two years, made ill by the climate. Recovering, he became a political correspondent for the Morning Post, living in the Balkans, in Warsaw, in Petersburg, and in Paris. He also began publishing the entertaining short stories that made him famous. In 1908 he settled in London, writing stories, playing bridge, and enjoying theatre and ballet. When the Great War broke out he enlisted in the ranks. On 14th November 1916, crouching with others in a shallow muddy shell-crater before an attack on Beaumont Hamel, he was heard to shout ‘Put that bloody cigarette out’ A moment later he was shot through the head.

This volume includes four of his best loved stories: "The Man on the Hill", "The Cobweb", "The Interlopers", and "The Hounds of Fate", read by Patrick Barlow.

Patrick has appeared on stage nationwide in such productions as Loot and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and his many television appearances include The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole and Victoria Wood - As Seen on TV, but he is probably best known for creating the character of Desmond Oliver Dingle, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of The National Theatre of Brent, that amazing two-man company which has presented on stage and television such productions as Charge of The Light Brigade, Zulu, The Messiah, and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780001487

Saki

Saki (1870-1916) was the pen name of British novelist and short story writer Hector Hugh Munro. Born in British Burma, Munro was the son of Inspector General Charles Augustus Munro of the Indian Imperial Police and his wife Mary Frances Mercer. Following his mother’s death from a tragic accident in 1872, Munro was sent to live in England with his paternal grandmother. In 1893, he returned to Burma to work for the Indian Imperial Police but was forced to resign in just over a year due to serious illness. He moved to London in 1896 to pursue a career as a writer. He found some success as a journalist and soon published The Rise of the Russian Empire (1900), a work of history. Emboldened, he began writing stories and novels, earning praise for Reginald (1904), a short story collection, and When William Came (1913), an invasion novel. Known for his keen wit and satirical outlook on Edwardian life, Munro was considered a master literary craftsman in his time. A gay man, he was forced to conceal his sexual identity in order to avoid criminal prosecution. At 43 years of age, he enlisted in the British cavalry and went to France to fight in the Great War. He was killed by a German sniper at the Battle of the Ancre.

Reviews for The Music on the Hill; The Cobweb; The Interlopers; The Hounds of Fear

[SaraHaneen · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I lik it

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful acerbic humour that brings a surprise smile. Saki can be likened to a cross between Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde although that description might be just a shade flattering. Very enjoyable.

[librisissimo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've read other collections of Saki, and love his droll wit and surprising twists.

[danielstj · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Complete and utter trite.

Avoid at all costs.

[bexaplex · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I started this collection thinking of Saki as a more transparently malicious version of P.G. Wodehouse; he eviscerates pompous society women in a few pen-strokes. The cruelty is always justified by character defect or wrong behavior on the part of the person being skewered, and the lively children (or perpetual-adolescents) — friends of animals — always prevail. I agree with one critic, quoted in the biography of Saki by E.M. Munro: "Munro's understanding of children can only be explained by the fact that he was in many ways a child himself: his sketches betray a harshness, a love of practical jokes, a craze for animals of the most exotic breeds, a lack of mellow geniality that hint very strongly at the child in the man. Manhood has but placed in his hands a perfect sense of irony and withheld all other adult traits."Some of the these stories are masterful. In a few sentences, Saki paints a few characters with precision and sets up a conflict into which the antagonist wanders, usually unaware, with hilarious results.How do I feel about the collection? The antagonists are often women (although girls are in a different category, apparently), and Saki skewers suffragettes, in particular, with regularity. It is certainly easier to find this humorous now that I can vote, although I admit those weren't my favorite stories. To me the autocratic aunts which haunt these stories and which are drawn from Munro's life seem sad, rather than powerful, making the casual cruelty toward them in bad taste. Am I imagining something that isn't there, or does the sadness come from Saki himself? In 'Excepting Mrs. Pentherby' Saki describes a communal country house where many couples reside for a season, sharing expenses. The house owner hires a woman to be annoying so that everybody's wives quarrel with her and there isn't a constantly shifting set of alliances. This is basically the plot of every reality show ever. At the end, the scheme is revealed to the owner's sister-in-law, who expresses one last burst of anger at the hired woman, but also at her brother-in-law, which Saki tries to deflect ("I think you are the most odious person in the whole world," said Reggie's sister-in-law. Which was not strictly true; more than anybody, more than ever she disliked Mrs. Pentherby. It was impossible to calculate how many quarrels that women had done her out of.) This is not a great, successful, story — the sister-in-law is not ridiculous enough to have deserved the prank, and the entire thing relies on one's supposed assumption that women (more than men) like to quarrel with each other. At the end I felt badly for the sister in law, which was obviously not the stated intention, although that emotion comes from the way that the sister-in-law is portrayed as mostly blameless.This is the first Saki that I've read, and It probably would have been smarter to start off with a smaller curated collection. But this large volume piqued my interest, and I believe those less-well-known stories gave me a better glimpse of the author.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found that Saki's humor worked better for me when I read his short stories than listening to them in audio. Frederick Davidson & Nadia May did an acceptable job narrating (though Davidson was not as good as May)...

[mouldywarp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nearly every story a delight - highly recommended entertainment!

[tilda.tilds · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hysterically funny with Saki's good old-fashioned dry English wit. A collection of stories with rarely a miss and most will make you laugh out loud if you share Hector Hugh Munro's sense of the ridiculous.

[liehtzu_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a really enjoyable collection of Victorian/Edwardian-era satire, the prose is wonderful and the humour bitingly apt for its time and culture. Think Oscar Wilde though not quite as adept. As window into a class system (as satirised by Wilde, by GBS -think Pygmalion, P.G. Wodehouse's – think Jeeves and Wooster) this is a witty eye-opener. There is something unfinished or under developed in some of the satires, as if the author got fed up half way through and having made his point couldn’t be bothered to polish it off; but don’t let that deter you. This will bring a wry smile to your lips – and what lovely English.

[grazianoronca_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

SREDNI VASHTAR and THE OPEN WINDOW Sredni Vashtar is a short story written between 1900 and 1914 by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro).This story is collected in this volume and also in an audiobook: Classic Chiiling Tales.A 10-year-old boy called Conradin lives with his guardian Mrs. De Ropp. Conradin’s is very hard because of his guardian, so he invents a new religion for himself. The idol of this religion is a palecat-ferret. Conradin named it Sredni Vashtar.‘Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.’: this is the Conradin’s prayer and the idol obeys to him.******************** *********************** ************************************The Open Window was collected with other short stories in 1914.A girl of fifteen tells to a visitor about her weird family.Girl: ‘Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her (= girl’s aunt) husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting.They never came back.’ (p.289)Girl: - Here they are at last (she cried)- In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window. … A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels.The ghost: - Who was that who bolted out as we came up?The aunt: - A most extraordinary man … and dashed off without a word of good-bye …One would think he had seen a ghost.The girl: - I expect it was the spaniel.He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere … by a pack of pariah dogs. (p.291)

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love Saki, and this book included some very funny tales that hadn't made it into the 'best of' collections that I have read in the past, as well as a few duds.

[figre · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In the introduction to this book is included the statement, “Saki’s short stories of urbane malice are like a fine dessert wine – they should be sipped, and savoured slowly; so intense are they that to read them at one sitting may induce a kind of literary dyspepsia.” I could not agree more. I approached this collection in such a fashion and cannot imagine trying to quickly read through this collection. Each story is a gem, and should be admired and reflected upon similar to the way one approaches gems – looked at from every side in order to fully appreciate the beauty; because these are beautiful pieces and each will have its own resonance and attraction.Saki’s wry commentaries about life and subtle twists to bring them to conclusion are each a crafted work of art. Sure, not all are masterpieces. But, even when not quite hitting the mark, there is still enjoyment in watching the craftsman at work. And just about the time you think you have a handle on Saki’s humor, along comes a chilling story about werewolves, or a ghost story, or a collection about the war that shakes you from the comfortable satire evident in other pieces. It is easy to try and pigeonhole Saki’s work, but this full collection will help anyone broaden their understanding. Nowhere is this more evident than in the novels. Neither is what one would expect from Saki. While the wryness is still evident, neither has the lightheartedness the short stories bring forward. The first (The Unbearable Bassington) tells the tragedy of the British stiff upper lip in regards to a wayward son, and the second (When Willam Came) was an alternate history where Germany had taken over England. I will always retain the image from one of the later chapters where a displaced Englishwoman watches the Union Jack raised in a far away land. At first, I almost lowered the rating of this book because of the inclusion of these pieces. (Saki’s writing becomes a bit much in the short novel format), yet the skill was still there, the stories were still moving, and they have both haunted me after the reading. Whether just now discovering Saki or already a fan, this is the ultimate book. Collections of complete works often have weak points (no one can always get it right), but the weak points in this one excels the best of most other authors’ works.

[julsitos2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The guy is on the same level as that of Chekov and Maugham. Almost all of his stories are full of morbid wit and sarcasm that all other Edwardian tales (think: The Little Princess) seem too stiff and wooden. His style is akin to that of aristocratic English authors, but never a difficult read like that of Dickens. Highly Highly recommended!!