Chaos is Come Again

England, 1932. The nation had just begun to recover from the wounds of the First World War when economic catastrophe struck with the Great Depression. It is against this background that Vernon Dexter arrives at the old manor house at Greystones, home of the notorious philanderer Sir Keith Petersley and his eccentric wife Lady Isabelle, to tutor their disabled son Eric. As he meets each of the strange members of the Petersley clan and gets caught up in the exciting dramas that unfold at Greystones, we see that the Petersleys are more than just a family: they are representative of an entire way of English life that is on the verge of extinction, to be replaced by a new age of chaos and greed.


Inexplicably neglected today, Claude Houghton (1889-1961) was one of the finest English novelists of the interwar period. Though he is best known for novels like I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930), psychological thrillers infused with philosophy and mysticism, in Chaos Is Come Again (1932), his theme is more overtly political. In light of the economic crises of recent years, today’s readers will find Houghton’s novel eerily prescient and his predictions about a society dominated by capitalistic greed remarkably accurate.