A book of brilliant entertainments: thirty-nine stories spanning the entire career of a great modern writer and an undisputed comic genius, "a satirist whose skill at sticking pens in people rates him a roomy cell in the murderers' row (Swift, Poe, Wilde, Shaw) of English letters" (Time).

The stories.
The balance
A house of gentlefolks
The manager of "The Kremlin"
Love in the slump
Too much tolerance
Excursion in Reality
Incident in Azania
Bella Fleace gave a party
Cruise
The man who liked Dickens
Out of depth
By special request
Period piece
On guard
Mr. Loveday's little outing
Winner takes all
An Englishman's home
The sympathetic passenger
My father's house
Lucy Simmonds
Charles Ryder's schooldays
Scott-King's modern Europe
Tactical exercise
Compassion
Love among the ruins
Basil Seal rides again
Juvenilia.
The curse of the horse race
Fidon's confetion
Multa pecunia
Fragment of a novel
Essay
The house : an anti-climax --

Oxford stories.
Portrait of young man with career ; Antony, who sought things that were lost ; Edward of unique achievement ; Fragments : they dine with the past ; Conspiracy to murder ; Unacademic exercise : a nature story ; The national game.