LIFE IN EDWARDIAN ENGLAND

by Robert Cecil ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 7, 1969

Cecil's sophisticated social history suffers, if at all, only from its own erudition; and even that is tempered by its, gentle humour, anecdotal colour, and amused, amusing stylistic subtleties. After putting ""The King in Orbit"" as gregarious, progressive, yet roundly human (quoting Lord Granville,""`The King is loved because he has all the faults of which the English townsman is accustomed'"" sic), Cecil presents eight chapters on the expected--the towns, the country, politics, transportation--and the piquant: ""Health, Food and Holidays,"" ""Childhood, Youth and Education,"" ""The State of Morals and the Rights of Women,"" ""The Press, Entertainment and Sports."" He's equally conversant with sex and the Boy Scouts, with Parliament and Punch, with menus and auto tyres; alternately stentorian and sarcastic, sometimes solemn and sometimes playful but never either at the expense of scholarship--rather, in fact, to the magnification of his points: ""The rejection on health grounds of large numbers of recruits (for the Boer War) stimulated public awareness that all was not well in the slums and rural hovels of Merrie England."" Life is peopled by Havelock Ellis, Winston Churchill, and H. G. Wells, by faces in photos and wicked cartoons, by schoolboys, steelworkers, and suffragettes, so the ""temptation. . . to claim unusual. . . coherence"" for the era is explained and ably avoided. This is not a romantic foray through exotica in the manner of Philippe Jullian, but rather a synthesis deepened by analysis. Mr. Cecil is a fine curator who has preserved, distilled, and demonstrated forcibly both the letter and the spirit of Edwardian England; his museum (conceptually British) welcomes the-wayfarer with the serious student.

Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION