To describe this book as social history was injudicious. History
suggests an intention 'on the writer's part to probe the causes of the events which he deals with, and Mr. Vivian Ogilvie does not do so. Nor is he directly concerned with events. What he has done is survey the changes which have taken place in many departments of life in Great Britain (e.g. agriculture, building, communications) since the early days of George V's reign. The chapters can be read singly. The book has a theme, but this is referred to casually and could disappear altogether without being missed.
But if Mr. Ogilvie has not shown himself here to be a historian, he proves to be an accurate and readable chronicler of facts. His book is more than a collection of articles suitable for a digest. It has form. The selection of photographs, sketches and car- toons from Punch, nearly a hundred all told, is good and illustrates a remarkable differ- ence in the manner in which we are affected by the appearance of things which have receded. Thus it is only the fashionable life of the period that in retrospect looks quaint. Life in the streets, in the factory, in the Services does not do so ; remote, some- times grotesque, it may look, but not absurdly, embarrassingly unreal like the sketches of ladies shopping in a depart- ment store in 1912. It is fashion, style, in a word artifice, that cannot be taken seriously after its day is done. Hence the quick ' dating " and the difficulty of successfully reviving in the theatre the comedy of manners, which is inserlarable from artifice and demands that the latter be accepted as
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