Spring Books
NUMBERS of books inspired by the Coronation are appearing this spring. Members of the. Royal family, Royal homes, and Royal gardens, the British Court and character studies of " the new Eliza- bethans " are some of the subjects. Most of these books have lavish illustrations.
- There are, as usual, plenty of autobiographies of eminent men. Lord Pakenham in Born to Believe (Cape) tells of two crises in his life—when he joined the Labour Party and when he became a Roman Catholic. L. S. Amery has written Confident Morning (Hutchinson), the first volume of My Political Life and covering the early years of the century. Hugh Dalton's first volume of autobiography is entitled Call Back Yesterday (Muller), and describes—during a period of forty-four years up to the end of the second Labour Government in 1931—childhood, Eton and Cambridge, fighting in France and Italy, the London School of Economics and Dr. Dalton's early years as a Socialist politician. Some letters of Rupert Brooke, a friend of the author, are published here for the first time. From America comes The Turbulent Era (Hammond Hammond), Joseph C. Grew's two-volume record of forty years in the Foreign Service of the U.S.A., covering his pre-1914 service in Vienna, the First World War, the Versailles Treaty, the Lausanne Conference (where Mr. Grew was instrumental in making peace between the Turks and Greeks), ten years in Japan and service from 1944 as Under-Secretary of State. From Germany comes The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring (Kimber) which the publisher calls " the first, and perhaps the last, autobiography to be written by a foremost military leader of the Third Reich."
Freya Stark has written a third volume of autobiography, The Coast of Incense, 1933-1939, which deals with travel in Egypt, the Persian Gulf and Arabia. Sir Leonard Woolley in Spadework : Adventures in Archaeology (Lutterworth Press) offers reminiscences of work in Northumberland, Italy and Carchemish and of the dis- coveries at Ur of the Chaldees. H. M. Tomlinson has written " autobiographical sketches," A Mingled Yarn (Duckworth), which opens with boyhood in the London docks in the 'eighties. Biography naturally ranges even more widely. Marryat by Oliver Warner (Constable) is the first full-length study since two pious and dull volumes were issued by Marryat's daughter in 1872. The author insists that the sailor and man about town was more than a schoolroom novelist. Constable also publishes Storming the Citadel : The Rise of the Woman Doctor by E. Moberly Bell, who was allowed access to many papers at the Royal Free Hospital. At the bicentenary of the British Museum G. R. De Beer has written Sir Hans Sloane and the British Museum (Oxford) ; it was Sloane's col- lections that were the foundation of the Museum. The same firm publishes Thomas Bewick by Montague Weekley in preparation for the bicentenary of the artist's birth.
Cassell makes special mention of Napoleon at St. Helena, an account of Napoleon's last days written in cipher by General Bertrand, Grand Marshal of the Palace. The diary was found in Paris in 1946 and has been deciphered by the French historian Fleuriot de Langle. It gives an hour-by-hour account of Napoleon's death. Lucrezia Borgia, who appeared in a recent book, The Marriage of Ferrara, is the subject of another biography, Lucrezia Borgia by Joan Haslip (Cassell), which deals with the Borgias at the height of their power. Iris Origo, who published an important life of Leo- pardi in 1935, has enlarged and rewritten it in Leopardi ; A Study in Solitude (Hamish Hamilton), since much new material, including many of the poet's letters, has come to light in the last twenty years. Among more recent subjects is Graham Robertson, the artist, collector and author, who died in 1948. Letters from Graham Robertson (Hamish Hamilton), edited by 'Kerrison Preston, contains references to Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Max Beerbohm and Noel Coward. Murray publishes The Story of Axel Munthe. Two views of him are presented—those of a cousin and a friend. Among miscellaneous works Fred Hoyle has written A Decade of Decision (Heinemann) in which he deals with contemporary social and scientific problems. Cassell publishes the latest collection of Winston Churchill's speeches which cover 1951-52 when he was both Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister. Sacheverell Sitwell in Truffle Hunt (Robert Hale) ranges from Japanese flower-paintings to Rowlandson's drawings ; and Dr. Edith Sitwell is publishing new poems Gardeners and Astronomers (Macmillan). Private View, a selection of the critical writings of Walter de la Mare, most of which have previously appeared anonymously, is being published by Faber.
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