John Martin Robinson

Sir Vavasour Firebrace

The Baronets’ Champion: Sir Richard Broun’s Campaigns for the Privileges of the Baronetage

By

Haggerston Press 141pp £18.95 order from our bookshop

Many of us have a weakness for biographies of the more eccentric, fantastic or rackety Victorians. Trevor-Roper’s hilarious account of Sir Edmund Backhouse is a great favourite. Ian Anstruther’s biography of Oscar Browning, that naughty public-school master, is another, while his account of the Eglinton Tournament in the Knight and the Umbrella has become a cult book. Now he has produced a biography of the original of Disraeli’s Sir Vavasour Firebrace in Sybil: Sir Richard Broun, Victorian champion of the baronets against the plebeians. 

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Here's reviewing Rachel Kushner's novel about a woman caught in the injustice of the US prison system,… ,
    • 'Hart sets out to unsettle, startle and disturb. In this strange, disconcerting, radical version of a strange, disc… ,
    • Here is @MannJessica's June crime fiction round-up, discussing books by Georges Simenon, Jack Grimwood,… ,
    • John Stubbs reviews Stephen Greenblatt's latest, 'Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power' ,
    • RT : What happened when US military strategist Herman Kahn - one of Kubrick’s three models for Dr Strangelove - took LSD… ,
    • 'Pollan has no doubt that the use of psychedelics could have a powerfully beneficial effect on a range of condition… ,
    • A memoir about an Untouchable family and the 'formation of modern India': 'Ants among Elephants' by @gidla_sujatha… ,
    Follow Us