""Damian Baxter was a friend of mine at Cambridge. We met around the time when I was doing the Season at the end of the Sixties. I introduced him to some of the girls. They took him up, and we ran about together in London for a while...." "Nearly forty years later, the narrator hates Damian Baxter and would gladly forget their disastrous last encounter. But if it is pleasant to hear from an old friend, it is more interesting to hear from an old enemy, and so he accepts an invitation from the rich and dying Damian, who begs him to track down the past girlfriend whose anonymous letter claimed he had fathered a child during that ruinous debutante season. The search takes the narrator back to the extraordinary world of swinging London, where aristocratic parents schemed to find suitable matches for their daughters while someone was putting hash in the brownies at a ball at Madame Tussaud's. It was a time when everything seemed to be changing--and it was, but not always quite as expected.

作者簡介

朱利安•費羅斯（Julian Fellowes）

著名作家、演員、電影導演製作人。在從事電影編劇之前，費羅斯有過30年不太成功的演員生涯。2002年，53歲的朱利安•費洛斯憑藉第一個被拍成電影的劇本《迷霧莊園》Gosford Park獲得第74屆奧斯卡金像獎最佳原創劇本獎，其後擔任編劇的作品《浮華世家》、《年輕的維多利亞》和音樂劇《保母包萍》等都廣獲好評。2011年，費羅斯憑藉《唐頓莊園》榮獲第63屆美國電視艾美獎最佳編劇。該劇集不但創下高收視並打破1981年《拾夢記》的收視紀錄，成為當代最成功的英國時代劇，並榮獲今氏世界紀錄「2010年全球最受好評的電視影集」，是首獲此殊榮的英國電視影集。

朱利安•費羅斯目前的劇作還有鐵達尼號電視劇集。

譯者簡介

宋瑛堂

台大外文學士，台大新聞碩士，波特蘭州立大學專業文件碩士﹐曾任China Post記者、副採訪主任、Student Post主編等職。譯作包括《修正》、《禪與摩托車維修的藝術》、《單身》﹑《斷背山》、《冷月》、《永遠的園丁》、《幸福的抉擇》、《蘭花賊》等書。