Mr. Clutterbuck's Election

Mr. Clutterbuck's Election begins as a sharp early-20th-century political satire and ends by turning a local contest into a national sensation. H. Belloc follows a cautious, self-satisfied City man whose life is shaken first by a comic business tangle over a "Million Eggs" investment, then by the absurd pressures of standing for Parliament in Mickleton. What starts in offices, warehouses, and train stations becomes a vivid study of delay, suspicion, nerves, and the fragile respectability on which men build their fortunes. As polling day arrives, Clutterbuck is battered by rain, hospitality, temperance, and exhaustion, while his supporters and rivals maneuver through domestic influence, public meetings, and electoral theatrics. The count delivers a tense, noisy victory, and the aftermath carries him from committee-room gratitude to household champagne and sleep as a newly elected Member of Parliament. The book's satirical reach widens further when the Mickleton result is hailed across England as a verdict on compulsory labor, unsettling the government and exposing the volatile collision of law, public opinion, and party politics. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.