Three Men in a Boat Boat" is how undated it appears to modern readers – the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty. The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. Jerome) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who would become a senior manager at Barclays Bank) and Carl Hentschel (the founder of a London printing business, called Harris in the book), with whom Jerome often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog". The trip is
The Boat Race 1925 illnesses, the Oxford crew was not finalised until five days before the race, and according to former Dark Blue rower and author George Drinkwater, "the innumerable changes prevented the crew from ever really getting together". Drinkwater also stated that the Oxford boat rowed with "three unfit men in the boat". Similarly, Cambridge were affected by illness, in particular the boat club president Robert Morrison who was forced to leave the crew. The Oxford crew weighed an average of 12 st 0.875 lb (78.5 kg), per rower more than their opponents. Cambridge's crew included six participants with Boat Race experience, all