New StatesmanToby Lichtig
For all his humour and gentle warmth, Burt is a child. He is obsessive, intrusively eccentric and deeply selfish. As Kitty lay dying, he fell to pieces; but it was the children who suffered most as a result. Burt claims to be trapped in his medievalism, a displacement as real for him as that of a pre-op transsexual. He cannot take responsibility for his actions - "By all accounts," he tells us, "June had had an unhappy childhood" - and his main instinct is denial. But for all the damage he has wreaked, he remains damaged goods himself (the nose is only the start).
