This incident means nothing to Percy, but it will haunt Dunstan for the rest of his life. In the letter, he looks back on his life, beginning in 1908 when, as a boy growing up in the small Canadian town of Deptford, an incident occurs that will shape his future: Percy Boyd Staunton, his friend and rival, throws a snowball containing a stone Dunstan – the intended target – jumps aside and instead the snowball hits a pregnant woman, who goes into premature labour with the shock. I think it was a good choice! I actually started to read it last August for a reading week hosted by Lory, but got distracted during a house move and didn’t go back to it until just after New Year, when I was able to give it the attention it deserved.įifth Business is narrated by Dunstable (later renamed Dunstan) Ramsay in the form of a long letter written to the headmaster of the school from which he is retiring, having taught there for many years. As someone completely new to Davies’ work it was hard to know where to start, but as it didn’t seem necessary to read these trilogies in any particular order, I decided to begin with the one that sounded most appealing to me, the Deptford Trilogy, of which Fifth Business is the first book. The IoD survey chimes with responses to a quarterly survey by the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) last month.Ĭontinuing a more buoyant trend since the Truss/Kwarteng budget debacle last September, the BCC found that more than half of UK firms (52%) said their business turnover was likely to increase over the next 12 months, up from 44% in the last three months of 2022.īusiness optimism can expect to come under pressure should the world’s leading central banks embark on a further increase in interest rates over the next fortnight, as expected.Robertson Davies is a Canadian author best known for his four trilogies – the Salterton Trilogy, the Deptford Trilogy, the Cornish Trilogy and the unfinished Toronto Trilogy. The proportion of directors who were either “quite optimistic” or “quite pessimistic” about the wider economy was almost identical at just under 31%.

While the improving survey data offers hope that UK economic growth may no longer be flatlining, Ussher acknowledged that concern about high inflation persists, with only a quarter of members believing it has peaked. “It is particularly reassuring to see a recovery in investment intentions, raising the hope that the economic fundamentals can continue to improve in the months ahead,” said Kitty Ussher, the IoD’s chief economist and former City minister under Labour.

Fifth business by robertson davies