In 1998 appeared The Sound of Trumpets, the third (and presumably concluding) novel in John Mortimer's "Rapstone Chronicles." It followed Paradise Postponed (1985) and Titmuss Regained (1990).One suspects that Mortimer's use of a phrase from John Bunyan's circa 1730 fable of The Pilgrim's Progress... for the title of his third Chronicle is ironic. Bunyan tells the story of Christian's struggle to attain salvation and the Gates of Heaven. He must pass through the Slough of Despond, ward off the temptations of Vanity Fair and fight the monstrous Apollyon....In Part 2, his wife and children follow the same path, helped and protected by Great-heart, until for them too "the trumpets sound on the other side."1 Leslie Titmuss—who is now, thanks to his hero Margaret Thatcher, Lord Titmuss—is no Christian, however hard he has struggled all his fictional life to attain a secular kind of salvation of power and prestige.
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- For this gloss on Bunyan, I'm indebted to Kid's LearnOutLoud website.
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