Eric Christiansen
Southey's Letters from England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella (Allan Sutton) is as good as anything I dare recommend in an audible solo. The liberal poet affected to be a conservative Spaniard in order to air his prejudices about England. The disguise was transparent, but it grew on him. There was more life in the mask than he expected. It made him wiser.
I leave the Black Spot to Blind Pew. I cannot praise Signor Eco's masquerade in The Name of the Rose, now in paperback, as highly as Southey's, although he works much harder at it. He is the 20th-century Italian professor who pretends to be a 19th-century French romancer pretending to be a 14th-century monk pretending to be Dr Watson. If he aimed to achieve the suspension of disbelief, he aimed too high. If not, too low.
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