A comedy thriller which also introduces us to many exotic types of cheese. The pages are full of names such as touloumotryi, chevre, tomme, vasterbotten and many others. Do they exist, or are they clever inventions by the author? Some adroit searching on the excellent cheese.com found most of them. The problem is that you start to get interested in the cheese, particularly the way that Milton describes them, but you have to search far and wide to find some of these delicacies.

WARNING: Don't read whilst hungry. I did!

Apart from the cheese, there is the general unwinding of the connection to Greece, of Byron's doomed adventure and the story of entering Constantinople on a white charger. Will his nose be his saving or his downfall like so many previous generations? The characters such as the blossoming wife, the hairy obsessed librarian and the eccentric solicitor friend all come to life vividly and create a micro world that is part Dickensian and part modern (no wonder it is set nearly 40 years ago), and there is no mention made of mobiles and hardly any of cars etc.