For all the social caricature here, there's a definite nostalgic fondness too, evoked by England's Christminster, the university city and the protected, intellectual world of those who lived there just before the war. Among them were Stephen and Andrew, who tells the story, brothers, students and young men of classical tastes. And in a barrage of rather nasty teatable chatter and conjecture, there was Mrs. Foyle, their neighbor, and the many speculations she provoked -- of her dead husband, a Captain, rumored responsible for her deformity (the loss of her fingers and toes); of her daughter, Miranda, in the theatre and married to Sir Peter, and Mrs. Foyle's fictitious belief in her devotion; and finally Mrs. Foyle's decline, in health, in poverty, and Miranda's shameful abandonment of her mother to the workhouse infirmary where she dies....An eccentric, cloistered world, cleverly and sentimentally recalled, this has its talents for a fairly special audience.