It was the success of "The Prime [Ministers of Britain 1721- 1921" published last year which encouraged the author to write this complement to the earlier volume and thus complete a survey of a thousand years of the history of England in so far as it is reflected in the lives of her rulers. It is certainly a courageous work. The compilation must also have required a vast amount of study and research.
Eight hundred years of history are considered in these 400 pages. Obviously it can be but the briefest) summary. The author contrives, however, in his thumbnail sketches of the lives of the ministers, to show us human beings, real live characters swayed by human passion and ambi-ion. For the present busy world it is a valuable book inasmuch as it does actually give a comprehensive view of the whole of the political history of the country in a form which shows the prime movers as living understandable men.
Herein is the author's courage. For in making the characters live in his pages he has adapted the method of the novel writer rather than of the biographer as we know him. Or perhaps it would be truer to say he assumes, in the same charming way that (Mr. Strachey in his biographies assumes, an intimate personal knowledge of his subjects. It is very deftly done, even if it is unconscious. And in the very brief lives in tins book it is an invaluable method. By this assumption of a special knowledge of his subjects' motives and aspirations he is able to summarize
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.