The announcement that Mr. J. W. Wheeler-Bennett has been appointed
the official biographer of the late King comes a little unexpectedly, for Mr. Wheeler-Bennett's literary interests have'lain so far almost wholly in the field of inter- national affairs, and in that field more particularly in the collation and presentation of documents, a most useful service which he has performed with notable success. He has, it is true, written a good life of Hindenburg, but the resem- blance between that magnate and our late sovereign is not arrestingly close. Any biographer of King George VI must be burdened with the harassing knowledge that his work will inevitably challenge comparison with Harold Nicolson's George V—and Mr. Nicolson was already a practiced biographer. But Mr.. Wheeler-Bennett, I see, states in an interview: -1 can only hope to make as good a job of it as Harold Nicolson made of King George V's biography."
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