P. H. Newby's [One of the Founders] embraces limitation a little too willingly. One of the Founders has his flair for topicality: here, the world of the Robbins report, the material being the founding of a new university in a provincial town…. Assorted scenes from provincial life are briskly exhibited, and the two physical climaxes of the book are an absurd sort of seduction and a bungled sword-fight, both amusingly grotesque in the way that Mr Newby has long since mastered. The first half of the novel in particular is often very funny and is well-observed—though well-heard would be a better description, since the dialogue tells without revealing…. This is the sort of novel of which it is said that it works on more than one level, the truth being that it is far from clear which floor one is meant to be on at a given...