Derby Day by D.J. Taylor

I read this book because it was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2011, and I had yet to read it.  It is a British novel through and through, with all the pomp and circumstance that makes the English aristocrasy so appealing and annoying at the same time.

The story is set in London and environs during a few weeks in the reign of Queen Victoria, it is not merely a work of historical fiction but one written in a language appropriate to its time — i.e., it is a Victorian novel. It is fun and can be read purely as such, yet it is also a serious novel about a society caught between the familiar and the new, in which “the world is changing” and leaving many people behind.The 'Derby' of the title is the great horse race that has been run at Epsom Downs for centuries, an event that brings together the whole range of British society from the highest to the lowest for one glorious race.

In this story there is one horse in particular that is the focus on a horse, Tiberius, and Mr. and Mrs. Happerton.  In some ways the couple deserve each other--they each have significant flaws that unfold over the course of the novel, and the horse and the race are on the one had at the center of the novel, and on the other hand, a distracting side bar to the main story of corruption and betrayal.