The “darling dodos” of the collection's title represent the anachronistic types flushed out by the Second World War: aesthetes, Catholic converts, liberals, scroungers, rakes and beggars. In the title story, rightwing, homosexual, Catholic Tony arrives at the home of his cousin, Priscilla, in the facile hope of provoking the deathbed conversion of her dying husband, Robin. Robin and Priscilla are good-works, Labour-voting liberals in the nineteen-thirties mould. Tony is delighted to discover that the young friends of his cousins believe him more in sympathy with their times than Priscilla and Robin, but it is clear that their rather repellent dogma about moral centres is not equivalent to Tony's passé embrace of fascist politics and the Catholic church. Tony is just a different kind…
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Citation: MacKay, Marina. "Such Darling Dodos". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 December 2000 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1858, accessed 23 November 2024.]
