Great Granny Webster

Caroline Blackwood

A black comedy set in Hove

This macabre, black comedy is the study of a decaying aristocratic family as seen through the eyes of Great Granny Webster's orphaned granddaughter.

Great Granny Webster herself is a grotesque matriarch who strictly adheres to age old customs and rituals, despite the intrusion of the modern age. She only ever ventures out to crawl along Hove's lawned seafront in a hired, chauffeur driven Rolls Royce and appears to derive no pleasure from either life or people.

In the monstrous old dowager of Hove, and the ruling class she represents, Blackwood found a subject grandly commensurate with her own extrordinary style of aghast relish. (Jonathan Raban).