Reginald

Meet Reginald: a perfectly insufferable young man who has mastered the art of being twenty-two years old forever. In these sparkling comic sketches, Saki turns his razor-sharp gaze on Edwardian society and finds it wanting. Reginald dispenses cynical wisdom on Christmas presents ('the giving of gifts is a savage custom, full of dark insincerity'), endures theatrical performances with weary disdain, and navigates house parties where the conversation flows like lukewarm champagne. His world-weary pronouncements mask a delicious wit that Saki deploys with surgical precision. Originally published in periodicals before the Great War, these stories capture a vanishing world of top hats and tongue-lashing, where the greatest social sin is being dull. Reginald himself is unbearable, of course - smug, self-satisfied, convinced of his own brilliance. But that's precisely the point. Saki understood that the funniest characters are the ones who have no idea they're funny. This is comedy that still cuts a century later, sharp as a hatpin and twice as pointed.