A L Rowse
Irresistibly Readable
Renaissance Essays
By Hugh Trevor-Roper
Secker & Warburg 204pp £l5
Trevor-Roper is an historical essayist rather than a constructive historian like Trevelyan, creatively building book upon book with big significant subjects, and with the proper organic structure a book should have. Nearly all these essays have been published before; but I am grateful to have them conveniently gathered together.
The essay on Robert Burton is the best thing ever written about him; it makes good sense of the amorphous mass of The Anatomy of Melancholy, a difficult job brilliantly executed. Not everybody finds that classic work readable: Trevor-Roper makes it sound quite sympathetic, and even that crusty old don,
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It wasn’t until 1825 that Pepys’s diary became available for the first time. How it was eventually decrypted and published is a story of subterfuge and duplicity.
Kate Loveman tells the tale.
Kate Loveman - Publishing Pepys
Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys
literaryreview.co.uk
Arthur Christopher Benson was a pillar of the Edwardian establishment. He was supremely well connected. As his newly published diaries reveal, he was also riotously indiscreet.
Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
Piers Brendon - Land of Dopes & Tories
Piers Brendon: Land of Dopes & Tories - The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson by Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)
literaryreview.co.uk
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk