ALL SOULS

At High Table in an Oxford college, the pretty, young tutor Clare Bayes attracted all eyes, not least to her fetching d-colletage. No one´s eyes were sharper, however, than those of the visiting Spanish lecturer, invited as a guest on this occasion and in due course the two young people were lovers, unbeknown to Clare´s husband. And if the Spaniard was at pains to cover their tracks, his beloved left evidence of adultery with gay abandon - and all this in a university that was a forcing house of gossip and intrigue, a place where at every word a reputation dies. This affaire between the canny Latin and the flighty English woman forms the central thread in a brilliantly wrought tapestry of Oxford life, at once affectionate in its insight and hilarious in its ironic portrayals of Senior Common Room worthies.