Tedium before lift-off

Readers of Captain Correlli's Mandolin will recognise the pattern.

One hundred pages of pure tedium before lift-off.

Except Glendinning is no de Bernieres and this so-called tangled tale of modern European love doesn't exactly soar to heady heights as splutter along with one engine down.

It's not so much a jet propelled long haul romance as a trip around the bay in a bi-plane.

But if you like a tale about a company takeover, an old chair, air miles, airports, engineering and glass, then you've just been upgraded to Business Class.

What more should you expect from a hero named after a flower who has a re-occuring nightmare and a tomato salad recipe worth pinching, juxtaposed with a moody French beauty who's in need of a good slap?

The flight in question could be Martagon's hasty retreat from London to the south of France, the new terminal he's helping to build to serve Marseilles, or Marina's hurried departure to be with gay boy- friend Lin in Paris.

Then again, it could be all three.

Any sympathy I might have had for Glendinning flew out of the window when she had an Englishman admire a woman's "butt" - and we're not talking about the collection of rainwater here.

Come the denoument, I just didn't fall for the wallowing self-pity, when one simple phone call would have put everyone out of their misery... to be honest, I was more worried about the abandoned borrowed car and how the owner was going to find it on his flight back home from Florida.

David Chapman