Word: bolitho
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA (437 pp.) -Hector Bolitho -Macmillan...
This new biography of Victoria, which is Bolitho's ninth about this period, has nothing of Strachey's amused, amusing manner, nothing of his skepticism and silky grace. Above all, it does not contain a single sentence that even runs a risk of being thought dangerously brilliant. All present or accounted for are the famous, fascinating figures of the great era-Baron Stockmar, Lord Melbourne, Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, Disraeli, the Duke of Wellington, et al.-and so frigidly correct that they appear to have been hewn from frozen blocks of Birds...
...Author Bolitho's reason for doing more amply what Strachey has already done more economically is the emergence of fresh material-among others, hitherto unpublished letters from Prince Consort Albert to his German tutor, letters from the Queen to her daughter the Empress of Germany, tappings from such virgin sources as the late Queen Marie of Rumania, certain aged members of Victoria's court and the 19th Century files of the Hartford (Conn.) Times and Courant. Hardly enough to justify a new and inferior biography...
BALD I ACCEPT AND WOULD NOT BOGGLE SERIOUSLY AT BALDISH BUT BALDING CALLS FOR REBUKE. I KNOW THAT TIME IS PROUD-PERHAPS RIGHTLY-OF ITS OWN VOCABULARY BUT MY LATE AND DEAR FRIEND WILLIAM BOLITHO WHOSE MASTERY OF STYLE NOT EVEN TIME CAN QUESTION ALWAYS WARNED ME AGAINST PRESENT PARTICIPLES SAVE WHERE NECESSARY BECAUSE THEY WERE HE SAID EVIDENCE OF LAX OR LAZY PROSE...
...with lucky breaks. As darkness gathers again, interest in Fortune revives. This week, in The Tide of Fortune, Biographer Stefan Zweig (Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles, Erasmus of Rotterdam, etc.) examines twelve varied instances of unpredictable turns of chance. The book is reminiscent of the late William Bolitho's grandly oblique sketches of adventurers, Twelve Against the Gods. Typical of Zweig's jack pots, lucky & unlucky...