Dunster. John Mortimer. 1992.

This is the gripping story of two men, Dick Dunster and Philip Progmire, locked in an adversarial friendship from their schooldays, at Oxford and on into a harsh world and the shifting grounds of marriage. It brings us the extraordinary figure of Dick Dunster who drives the story to its climax.

Progmire’s thespian longings, nurtured since he was a university actor and through his liaison with the Ophelia to his Hamlet, are now submerged in his work as an accountant with Megapolis Television plc. But at least he sees actresses on the other side of the canteen, and he pursues his taste for drama with the Muswell Hill Mummers. Dunster is also at Megapolis, engaged on a TV expose of war criminals, focusing on a TV expose of war criminals, focusing on a blown-up church and the massacre of the whole population of a small town during the Italian campaign.

As Dunster researches his subject, the scene darkens and Progmire tries to protect the victim of his old school friend’s merciless inquisition. Long after the cessation of hostilities, Dunster and Progmire are at war.