Plot Synopsis

The Clicking of Cuthbert

Cuthbert Banks loves his golf. He also loves Adeline Smethurst, whose aunt presides over the Wood Hills Literary and Debating Society. Adeline, however, prefers someone more spiritual, more intellectual. Someone such as rising young novelist Raymond Parsloe Devine, whom the critics have described as more Russian than any other young English writer. So when Vladimir Brusiloff, the famous Russian novelist, is invited to address the Literary and Debating Society, Cuthbert's hopes of 'clicking' with Adeline seem to have evaporated.

A Woman is Only a Woman

Few things draw two men together more surely than a mutual inability to master golf, and so it is with Peter Willard and James Todd. Until, that is, a serpent enters the Links of Eden in the person of Grace Forrester. Before very long, it isn't only golf for which James and Peter share a passion.

But as in golf, so in wooing, neither seems to have a clear advantage. What if one of them left the neighbourhood, leaving the other with a clear field? But how to decide who leaves and who stays? An 18-hole golf match seems the obvious answer.

A Mixed Threesome

The costermongers of East London have a saying: "Never introduce your donah to a pal." If Mortimer Sturgis had ever heard this saying, he'd have known better than to introduce his fiancée, Betty, to his old school friend Eddie Denton. For Eddie is an explorer, one of those men who spends all his time in places where it's death for a white man to go — just the sort to appeal to Betty's romantic nature.

Sundered Hearts

A tragic tale which highlights the importance of knowing one's wife's name.

At his first sight of the young woman in the dining room of the Hotel Superbe, Mortimer Sturgis knows he is in love. Imagine his joy upon discovering that the young woman is Miss Somerset, "the Open champion". Imagine his dismay upon discovering, after they are wed, that his wife is not Mary Somerset, the Ladies' Open golf champion, but her cousin Mabel, a champion croquet-player!

The Salvation of George Mackintosh

If George Mackintosh has one virtue above all others, it's the fact that he doesn't talk while playing golf. But what is a virtue on the links, becomes a handicap when George wishes to woo Celia Tennant. A correspondence course on "How to Become a Convincing Talker" soon cures George's diffidence. But now he can't stop talking.

Only Celia and her niblick can restore George to his former state.

Ordeal by Golf

Alexander Paterson, president of the Paterson Dyeing and Refining Company, needs a new company treasurer. To assess the character of the two candidates, he is advised to play a round of golf with each in turn. But whereas Rupert Dixon is unflappable on the golf course, Mitchell Holmes loses his temper at the least little thing. The result would seem to be a foregone conclusion . . .

The Long Hole

Ralph Bingham and Arthur Jukes have never been friends. And when Amanda Trivett arrives in Woodhaven, their smouldering distaste for each other bursts out into the flames of actual enmity, as they compete for her attention. To settle their rivalry, they decide to play a hole of golf. But no ordinary hole — this one will start on the first tee, but finish in the doorway of the Majestic Hotel, some sixteen miles away!

The Heel of Achilles

When Vincent Jopp, the American multi-millionaire, decides to do something, he invariably succeeds. So when the young woman whom he has selected to be the fourth Mrs Jopp agrees to marry him only if he wins the American Amateur Golf Championship, he is undeterred by the fact that he has never played the game before. Soon it seems that nothing can stop him becoming champion. But even great men have an Achilles' heel. And Vincent Jopp has three — his ex-wives . . .

The Rough Stuff

Ramsden Waters may look like a rabbit, but, as Eunice Bray is about to discover, on the golf course he displays in equal proportions the outstanding characteristics of Nero, a wildcat, and the second mate of a tramp steamer.

The Coming of Gowf

Strange things are happening in the kingdom of Oom. And at the centre of them is a small, bearded man who was captured in a raid on the inhospitable coast of S'nandrews . . .

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