The Masters

By C. P. Snow

Winner of 1954 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.

Widely regarded as C. P. Snow’s masterpiece, this lucid and compelling story of the contest for the Mastership of a Cambridge college is the fifth novel in C. P. Snow’s magnificent Strangers and Brothers sequence.

As the old Master slowly dies of cancer, his colleagues and peers jostle for power. Two candidates come to the foreground; Paul Jago – warm and sympathetic, but given to extravagant moods and hindered by an unsuitable wife – and Crawford, a shrewd, cautious and reliable man who lacks any of Jago’s human gifts. For Lewis Eliot, through whose eyes the narrative unfurls, the choice is clear, but politics and egos soon cloud the debate and the College is torn in two.

Depicting power in a confined setting with clarity and humanity, The Masters remains unsurpassed in its quiet, authoritative insight into the politics of academia.

A meticulous study of the public issues and private problems of post-war Britain, C. P. Snow’s Strangers and Brothers sequence is a towering achievement that stands alongside Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time as one of the great romans-fleuves of the twentieth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Feb 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781509864263

C. P. Snow

C. P. Snow was born in Leicester in 1905 and educated at a secondary school. He started his career as a professional scientist, though writing was always his ultimate aim. He won a research scholarship to Cambridge and became a Fellow of his college in 1930. He continued his academic life there until the beginning of the Second World War, by which time he had already begun his masterwork – the eleven-volume Strangers and Brothers sequence, two of which (The Masters and The New Men) were jointly awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1954. His other novels include The Search, The Malcontents and In Their Wisdom, the last of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1974. Snow became a civil servant during the war and went on to become a Civil Service commissioner, for which he received a knighthood. He married a fellow novelist, Pamela Hansford Johnson, in 1950 and delivered his famous lecture, The Two Cultures, that same year. C. P. Snow died in 1980.

Reviews for The Masters

[elizabethchapman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I began The Masters with the expectation that I would find it filled with telling insights into British culture in the period between the World Wars, and the fear it would be dull, dull, dull. To my delight (and relief) I found myself engrossed in a fascinating narrative. The novel opens as the fellows of a fictional college at Cambridge learn that the current Master of the college has a terminal illness. When he dies, the fellows know they must elect a new Master. A prolonged, and oh so gentile, power struggle ensues as two candidates for the post come forth and each of the 13 fellows take sides.The novel recounts the subtle machinations of human affairs and gives a wonderfully nuanced picture of the personalities, lives, and visions for the future (or of the past) of the 13 men. We the readers, and the author of course, know World War II is coming. While the gathering storm of that conflict doesn’t play a major role in the story, our knowledge that it is imminent gives a deeper dimension to what seem tangential differences in global/political view to the characters within the story.C.P. Snow draws beautifully rendered portraits of the men involved in the election. You come to know the key players, and many secondary characters, in all the quiet complexity of their lives. There is no “action” to be speak of, save the cataclysmic turning points of ordinary lives. And of course there is the pure intrigue of waiting to see who will win the election. To my surprise, I highly recommend this for anyone who enjoys a good (if somewhat cerebral) story.

[mabe_10 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my top ten books ever. Hardly a racy plot, but I love the insightful descriptions of the main characters. I also like the snapshot of the cloistered life of the university. The opening scene where the author is reading a book in a large drafty room, snuggly ensconsed by the fire is so evocative

[ponsonby_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Brilliantly atmospheric portrayal of men and their behaviour, set around an election for the Master of a Cambridge College in the mid-1930s. Very acute descriptions of people and places, with an energised suspense maintained throughout. I was very pleasantly surprised by this book.