And Thereby Hangs a Tale (ISBN 0230531451) is British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 author Jeffrey Archer's sixth collection of short stories. It was published in 2010, and ten of the fifteen stories are based on tales Archer gathered on travels over the previous six years or so. The other five stories are claimed to derive from his own imagination.

The title comes from Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1591.The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the Induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself...

. The book had a special launch in Mumbai

Mumbai

Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

, India in May 2010. A Bollywood

Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...

 film adaptation of the story Caste-Off has been proposed.

Reception

The Independent said that "the majority of the stories told to him seem to concern cons and money, and the ones he made up flash their outcomes on huge neon signs from the outset", and DNA complained that "His train of thought is almost predictable, and not many of the stories linger in your head after you’re done reading them."

The Calcutta Telegraph, reviewing the book because one of the stories is set in India, concluded that "Highbrows will turn up their noses at this book. Not quite Maupassant or Chekhov they will grumble. The loss is theirs because the stories, like Archer’s previous ones, are a delight", and Daily Times was equally positive, calling it "an ingenious short book, which is both smart and sassy and thoroughly satisfying."

Contents

1. "Stuck on You"
2. "The Queen's Birthday Telegram"
3. "High Heels"
4. "Blind Date"
5. "Where There's a Will"
6. "Double-Cross"
7. "'I Will Survive'"
8. "A Good Eye"
9. "Members Only"
10. "The Undiplomatic Diplomat"
11. "The Luck of the Irish"
12. "Politically Correct"
13. "Better the Devil You Know"
14. "No Room at the Inn"
15. "Caste-Off"

Synopses

• Stuck on You tells the story of how a young man is conned by a rich young woman into stealing a diamond ring as an engagement ring and fleeing off to run into another victim of hers after the robbery is successfully carried out.
• The Queen's Birthday Telegram tells the story of an old couple who celebrate their Centenary birthday and how the husband finds out that his wife is older than he is and had celebrated her Centenary before him.
• The Undiplomatic Diplomat allegedly based on truth, is about an eccentric genius with an encyclopedic memory and high-profile ancestry who fails in his diplomatic postings but thrives as the chief archivist to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
  Foreign and Commonwealth Office
  The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...
  
  . On retirement, and determined to have achieved something memorable in his career, he sets about exploiting an ancient legal technicality which would win an island (possibly Rockall
  Rockall
  Rockall is an extremely small, uninhabited, remote rocky islet in the North Atlantic Ocean. It gives its name to one of the sea areas named in the shipping forecast provided by the British Meteorological Office....
  
  ) for the Crown and gain himself recognition worthy of his forefathers.
• Politically Correct has the reader in suspense until the end believing one set of tenants to clearly be terrorists. The protagonist in his investigations is in for a shock and a lesson in prejudice.
• Caste-Off is a story based in the Indian capital New Delhi
  New Delhi
  New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
  
  ; how the lead characters Jamwal and Nisha fall in love while waiting for a traffic light to turn green and how Jamwal's parents don't let him marry Nisha because she belongs to a different caste.

External links

• Jeffrey Archer's official website
• And Thereby Hangs A Tale in RightBooks.in