you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

So, on penmage's recommendation (and because she provided a free link to it here, I'm reading Jo Walton's Farthing. It is made of all good elements: British country house party murder mystery (just like Agatha Christie), alternate history (Britain made peace with Hitler), moderately interesting characters. I'm enjoying it lots. But one thing is sticking out: a conspicuous absence, if you will. Actually, it isn't that conspicuously absent, just a bit around the edges. There's a bit of Shakespeare and Biblical quotation happening by the characters, which is good, but there's just about no classical quoting, and I'm missing it. The MC has a cute little system for talking obliquely about sexual orientation in terms of antiquity, and given that everyone is British upper class public school cum Oxbridge educated, I find myself expecting Virgil or Horace of Cicero, or SOMEONE.

It's interesting, because one of the things I love about Anthony Trollope (the only other thing I've read of Walton's is Tooth and Claw which is a rewrite of Trollope with dragons as the main characters, that possibly fails on just this count, now that I think about it) is the amount of allusion he makes just as a narrator. And I actually don't remember whether this (by which I now mean Farthing again) sort of novel does that; I want to say that Dorothy Sayers and Josephine Tey do have characters making learned references, but I'm not sure. And certainly, I may be being extra sensitive to this right now because I am only putting up with Horace on the grounds that he is of Extreme Cultural Importance. And so I want the vindication by finding him. Would a dulce et decorum est, even if it comes courtesy of Wilfred Owen, be too much to ask? Well, I still have quite a few chapters to go.

ETA: Does a reference to President Lindberg mean that this is the same alt-universe as The Plot Against American (which I haven't read)?

ETA2: Finished. I MUST HAVE THE SEQUEL. NOW. Poor Carmichael.