…essentially, the book remains a story of British upper classes and the author has seemingly trawled an impressive body of memoirs and biographies so as to bring to life any number of entertaining, if gossipy personal vignettes. For example: “Life without champagne was inconceivable for Winston [Churchill].” “Henry Crust joining Lord Curzon in a nude tennis doubles tennis match against George Wyndham and Wilfrid Blunt.” “[The Earl of Lonsdale]…a man apparently incapable of enjoying a healthy sex life with a member of his own class: he collapsed, dead of a heart attack while in action in his own private brothel.”

This article is filed under Great Britain, History, Non-Fiction Reviews.

To be sure, the fifteenth century was one of the most politically unstable periods in English history and most modern readers’ view of the period is heavily colored by Shakespeare. He portrayed the bitter civil war known as the Wars of the Roses as divine punishment for the Lancastrian usurpation and the murder of Richard II, and in his portrayal of Richard III he created one of the most magnificent villains of the English stage.

This article is filed under Great Britain, History, Non-Fiction Reviews.

Repression, fear and even loathing run through her mind as she braces herself for what is to come after their meal. We are told in the first sentence that they are ‘young, educated and both virgins’ and she is unwilling to alter this state. Her only knowledge of sex is derived from a manual and she has convinced herself that she is without desire.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Great Britain, Sex.

For the first time there was a feeling that technologically, economically and politically, as well as culturally, the British had nothing to learn from India and much to teach; it did not take long for imperial arrogance to set in. This arrogance, when combined with the rise of Evangelical Christianity, slowly came to affect all aspects of relations between the British and the Indians.

This article is filed under Great Britain, History, India, Non-Fiction Reviews, Religion.

Interest in Rosetta in Britain was part and parcel of a larger trend: the postwar blues revival, which saw the emergence of a white public who “sought a heightened reality in the realm of black American song.”

This article is filed under African American, Great Britain, Music, Performing Arts.

Sheep wallows eventually became sand traps and the first greens were nothing more than somewhat level overgrazed patches of grass that were often covered with the residue of the feeding rabbits.

This article is filed under Biography, Great Britain, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sports.

This is a broad ranging work as it manages to be poetic whilst drawing on current events in the news, such as the war in Iraq, teenage delinquency and paedophilia in the Catholic Church.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Great Britain, Religion.

The story of modern Britain – at least one of the stories – begins some three hundred years ago with the 1707 Treaty of Union between England and Scotland.

This article is filed under Great Britain, History, Non-Fiction Reviews.

Fowles was a writer who always seemed content to remain in the shadows, on the edge of things. He would emerge now and again to play the part of the cantankerous recluse, but he was, in essence a private, even hermetic man.

This article is filed under Classics, Fiction Reviews, Great Britain, Thrillers.

Even the greatest deeds of brave men can be forgotten in the mists of time – even when those deeds have a direct impact on how our world is organized today.

This article is filed under Great Britain, History, Military, Non-Fiction Reviews.

Like its predecessor, The Victorians, this book is a portrait of an age, rather than a formal history.

This article is filed under Great Britain, History, Non-Fiction Reviews.

Eric Ambler (1909-1998) was one of the foremost architects of espionage fiction as it exists today. Like his predecessor Somerset Maugham, Ambler sought to transform the genre from the verbal banality and minimal characterizations of authors William Le Queux and Edward Oppenheim to a more sophisticated, morally ambiguous world of deception and danger.

This article is filed under Biography, Espionage, Fiction Reviews, Great Britain, Thrillers, Writers.

But, even more importantly, he also struck the first modern note in the evolution of the genre with respect to the degree of personal doubt and insecurity that over-shadows the mission – the same note, albeit greatly amplified, that is found in the novels of such well-known successors as Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and John Le Carré, whose spy stories may be correctly seen, in part at least, as a continuance of John Buchan and the Hannay Quartet.

This article is filed under Biography, Espionage, Great Britain, Movies, Non-Fiction Reviews, Thrillers, Writers.

It is of all the Celtic kingdoms the greenest and most beautiful. Palms, wisteria, and camellias grow in Cornish gardens. Bluebells and small wild orchids bloom beside the coastal path, that winds along meadow edges above the cliffs and surf.

This article is filed under Great Britain, History, Non-Fiction Reviews, Travel.