The first few chapters were really tedious trying to build a picture of the town, the history of Hiram’s hospital and Mr Harding situation itself, all ultimately being very confusing. I also found ‘The Warden’ a bit boring, both in terms of the subject matter, no offence to anyone of the cloth but it just doesn’t interest me much though that said if I’d enjoyed the book more I would have been happy to find out more, and also the writing. Plus if you have read the book and see the outcome this all becomes all the more unsatisfying frankly. Here I will be as honest with a well respected classic author as I would be with a debut novelist as I like to compare books as a reader not an academic… It seemed simply do be done for the story, throw in this love for Eleanor and there we have a vague plot of a Victorian Robin Hood when actually Mr Harding isn’t really a villain. Not because, as I agreed, the money was extravagant at the time but what on earth it had to do with him.

My second issue with confusion was why John Bold was making such a fuss. So coming to it from that angle, no matter how much I wanted to understand it was a slight issue. I also just got confused with how an almshouse worked again I went off a researched and still didn’t really get it. At the time this was published everyone reading would most likely know what a precentor of a cathedral was, I had no clue and going off an d looking it up I was given a mass of contradicting definitions, some simply said a clergyman others said a man in charge of the choir. Firstly there was the problem of utter confusion. I have to admit that I just didn’t ever really get into ‘The Warden’ for several reasons. It is this income that has been bequeathed that a certain John Bold, a zealous reformer, wants to look into as it seems that Mr Harding gets around £800 a year for really doing very little, is that really what the Diocese wanted and that money not benefit more people in better ways? Throw in the fact Mr Bold is in love with Mr Harding’s youngest daughter Eleanor and all becomes rather awkward. Really ‘The Warden’ centres on Mr Harding who is the precentor of the cathedral and also the warden of Hiram’s Hospital, an almshouse supported by a previous and now deceased Diocese of Barchester which supports several men in it and also the warden themselves. The novel doesn’t have a particular date in which it is set but as you read on you realise it is very much about the Victorian period in which it was written. ‘The Warden’ is the first in the series of the Chronicles of Barsetshire/Barchester Chronicles, tales all constructed around a fictional English Cathedral town. Oxford University Press, paperback, 1855 (2008 edition), fiction, 336 pages, kindly sent by the publishers

The warden trollope review