D. Adams, Life, the Universe and everything (1982)
R. Garrett, Too many magicians (1966)
--------, Murder and magic (1979)
--------, Lord Darcy investigates (1981)
J. Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (1959)
L.E. Major, Social mobility and its enemies (2018)
M. Savage, Class in the 21st century (2015)
P. Kidambi, Cricket country (2019)
D. Tossell, Nobody beats us (2009)
It's fashionable to question whether the gatekeepers of the cannon are right. I read a couple of books about class and social mobility that were interesting on this, but frustrating in their studied relativism. However, I find that reviews and analysis are usually entirely right. Case in point: James Pope-Hennessy's biography has long been held as the gold standard for royal biography, and so it is. Judiciously skipping over the familiar bits, but filling out the rich texture of the Protestant German royalty and the routine lives of royalty, minor and major in the period covered. For those of us who are not nineteenth century specialists, I thought it was a fascinating reach back into an era where the last of the daughters-in-law of George III were still alive, and a highly effective run into the reign of the current monarch. Of course, it was also written two or three generations ago, so it has an additional layer of interest.
However, outstanding though the biography was, the best thing I read were the edited notes, or really the write ups of selected interviews. These are literary pieces - Pope-Hennessy did write them up with an eye to posterity - but convey the immediacy of the interviews and the emerging pattern of the research. He suggested that they would be published 50 years later. At nearly sixty, the revelations themselves are not shocking (who now cares that Queen Mary had an infatuation before George V), but the trenchant commentary and the detail of the individuals is beautifully done. It is highly amusing, brimming with interest, and nice and short (the biography itself weighs in at over 600 pages). Start here.
