History Literature / Evensong

* BassoProfundo: The Duke is very short, very trim, and practically an oktavist.

* BoyBand: Niece Hetty is a [[Music/OneDirection Directioner]]. And the scratch group of singers for village concerts and charity recordings, "The Fonts," consisting of Edmond (who gave up showtunes for football and the closet), Teddy (who was In A Band at school), The Breener (''Schola Cantorum'' at Downside with the future Mgr Folan), Fr Paddick (boy chorister who now, heh, heh, sings for his (ecclesiastical) living), and Sher (English and Music master at the Free School, organist, composer, M.Mus., ARCO, and with a diploma in Choir Directing), with the Duke as BassoProfundo, are regarded by Hetty as her boyband heroes ten or fifteen years on (bar her uncle the Duke). It's a RunningGag.

* {{Opera}}: While cutting a charity appeal CD, the Duke, being a BassoProfundo, sings a few lines of Sarastro's "''In diesen heil'gen Hallen''" to, or at, Edmond after Edmond has to apologize for yet another tantrum. Teddy reminds Edmond that he's lucky it wasn't the Commendatore in "Don Giovanni": "''Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m'invitasti ... e son venuto.''" And in a nice bit of foreshadowing, the Duke says coolly he's saving that in case his brother Crispin ever comes back home.

Sprawling, Trollopean, quintessentially British novel published in 2015 by [[Creator/GMWWemyss GMW Wemyss]]: the second in the [[Literature/VillageTales Village Tales]] series, following on from 2013's [[Literature/CrossAndPoppy Cross And Poppy]] and followed by 2016's [[Literature/TheDayThouGavest The Day Thou Gavest]].

* AllJewsAreAshkenazi: Averted. The Salmons are not solely Ashkenazim. (Lampshaded far more explicitly still in TheDayThouGavest.)

* HistoricalInJoke: Plenty. For example, the suggestion that the reason why BenjaminDisraeli's "favorite flower" was said to be the primrose ("Primrose" is the family name of the Earls of Rosebery, one of whom was Prime Minister some years after Dizzy was), had to do with the bisexuality of both men, and, in effect, "someone had tell Queen Victoria ''something'' True But Misleading."

* {{Motown}} / {{Soul}}: If the series, and this book, had a soundtrack, it would be Northern Soul.
** Mr Kellow down the Boar was sent all over the country, when young, by his dad, to apprentice in pubs. Including in Wolverhampton and OopNorth, where he became a fixture of the Northern Soul scene.

* OldFashionedCopper: Sergeant Fay, and in fact the whole of Wiltshire Police (the Duke insists on continuing to call them the County Constabulary): of the DixonOfDockGreen variety, mind you.

** And nobody since [[Creator/AnthonyPrice Anthony Price]] has made more shout-outs to [[Creator/RudyardKipling Kipling]].

* SpiritualSuccessor: Updated and with grit added, to AnthonyTrollope, Barbara Pym, and Miss Read. With a touch of Creator/PGWodehouse.

* UnresolvedSexualTension / WillTheyOrWontThey: Sher and Noel are under considerable outside pressure, not to refrain but to do, and resolve their tension; there's the beginnings of adolescent tension between Hetty and Mark Grampound; and then there's the whole Duke-and-Lady-Lacy stramash....

* WeatherReporOpening: The beginning of the second chapter, Psalm Preludes:

* BarSinister: Averted. Literally, in that the Royal Stuart quarter in the ducal arms … well:
--> "… the old quarters of blood and pride. The Stuart Royal Arms, France Modern and England quartering Scotland and Ireland, within a bordure compony of Argent and Azure, the true blue compartments of that bordure bearing each a white and Yorkist rose, a rose Argent barbed and seeded proper: a quarter bare of any bend or baton (unlike that in the first quarter of Rory's Badenoch arms, in which the Stuart Royal Arms in their bordure compony of Gules and Or are further debruised by a baton Argent, marking the celebrated 'double bastardy of Badenoch')...." [Rory is the Marquess of Badenoch, a kinsman of the Duke's.]

* BattleButler: The Duke's butler, Viney – ''Mister'' Viney to you, unless you're the Duke or his family – and indeed all the staff at Wolfdown House. Viney's the other churchwarden (with the Duke), Vice-Captain (with the Duke) of the Woolfonts Combined XI, the overall XO for ''everything,'' and runs rings around the local constabulary for intel and investigation. As the Duke says, 'I haven't a network of informers, really, I've a staff' – and the Duke was an Intelligence Corps officer at the sharp end in Iraq and Afghanistan. Viney's less a Battle Butler than a Battle ''Bunter''.

* BigBrotherInstinct: The Duke to Crispin; Rupert and Jamie, his nephews and Cripsin's sons, to their little sister Hetty (Henrietta Maria); Sher to his sisters; Sher's father Alam to ''his'' sister, the Nawab's Begum … it's pretty much universal.