An august but shabby institution, it offers training in Shakespearean and other stage drama to child actors, deliberately eschewing more profitable types of work such as TV, film and modelling.

In spite of pressure to modernise from her solicitor brother, and from Joey Blatt, an intending investor, Freddie prefers to beg or borrow anything she needs from the local theatre community, relying on her reputation and charm.

Realising his own incompetence at teaching, as in everything else, Carroll's attraction turns into unhealthy infatuation, and after Hannah out of pity offers him sex she finds him assuming that marriage will follow.

Although a competent actor, Mattie struggles in the role, and his fear of heights makes it particularly difficult for him to be convincing in the scene in which he has to jump from the castle battlements to his death.

Meanwhile, Jonathan’s fate is also left unclear, the novel ending as he continues to climb and jump “again and again and again into the darkness.” Fitzgerald centred the book on the experiences of her first teaching job, at the Italia Conti stage school in Clapham, London, where she taught general subjects to aspiring child actors.

[4] Fitzgerald’s biographer Hermione Lee called the character of Freddie "partly just a huge joke, a female Falstaff, a vast, shambolic, sedentary creature frowsting in her smelly, shabby, crimson lair.

[8] Writing in The Times, Flora Casement held that At Freddie's was "compelling and enjoyable" due to its original style and satisfactorily unpredictable ending.

[12] Peter Wolfe in 2004 called the book "a novel whose dizzying moral ironies, smart pace, and deft set pieces give it a real grace".