The peacock displayed himself and paraded the lawn, sometimes pausing to look up at the sky. Waiting? Listening? Guiding. No. Signalling. Controversial when first published in the early days of World War II, due to its treatment of a loathsome upper-crust family dodging wartime responsibility, A Footman for the Peacock can now be enjoyed as a scathing satire of class abuses, a comic masterpiece falling somewhere between Barbara Pym...