THE BELLAMY SAGA

Bless us, Mrs. Bridges, what's to be next! Author Pearson (The Life of Ian Fleming; Gone to Timbuctoo, etc.) has fantasized and jollied up a version of Upstairs, Downstairs which starts in the pre-television past. Lady Marjorie was to be married off to that ""aging pederast"" the Duc d'Amboise. It is the promising young Embassy secretary, Richard, who nips that union in the bud by relaying a little fiction concerning Lady Southwold and the Prince of Wales. Dismissed, Richard is set up for a political career by a sympathetic Lord Southwold who opposed his virago wife. And so it all wobbles on. Who could ever guess Richard could be so sly or that Lady Marjorie would demand sex in the drawing room! And there are tidbits throughout (until 1929) about those dear others. Like Hudson who left to marry one Annie Ferguson and in whose absence Richard was almost assassinated by an Irish terrorist--or the exquisite Georgina who screams at Hazel: ""You were just jealous. . . . You wanted your revenge on both of us!"" For very idle moments between the reruns.