From Library Journal
The Georgian age to which Halperin (Life of Jane Austen, LJ 9/15/84) refers is that of King George V?primarily the Britain of the 1920s and 1930s. His format, a bow to Lytton Strachey's 1918 Eminent Victorians, is a quartet of life stories of significant figures?a king (George V); a novelist (Bowen); a "tycoon" and civil servant, father to a famous spy (Philby); and the first woman member of Parliament (Astor). His theme is the interplay of Victorian tradition and developing modernism, the way an age shapes its actors and the actors shape the age. His style is engaging, chatty, and vigorously opinionated, particularly about Lady Astor. An entertaining book and a good choice for most biography collections.?Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., BloomingtonCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
In the vein of Lytton Strachey's classic collective biography, Eminent Victorians, Halperin profiles four figures exemplary of a later age in Britain. Halperin sees past reputation as the way to take the real measure of two men and two women, each in their own way representing the "simultaneity of traditionalism and experimentation" that characterized British society between the two world wars. Emphasizing their "allegiance . . . to tradition and to change, to the status quo and to the future," Halperin reenvisions in these cogent portraits the lives of the sovereign himself, George V; Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen; St. John Philby, oddball figure in the foreign service; and Lady Astor, who, although American born, was the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. Halperin's talent is to recognize the four as individuals while also seeing their commonality. Brad Hooper


From Book News, Inc.
Halperin considers how their world shaped these four personalities, and the impact they had on their era. Halperin writes that all four--a king; an author exposed as a World War II spy; the father of the notorious Kim Philby; and the American divorcee who became the first female member of Parliament--embody the simultaneous allegiance of many Georgians both to tradition and to change, to the status quo and to the future. "Their spiritual and historical ambivalence defines the age they lived in," he writes, "and the age they lived in, it may be, was defined in some small way by the lives they led." Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

ANNOTATION

The author of the bestselling The Life of Jane Austen illuminates the connections among four fascinating people and the age in which they lived--the second "Georgian" age, the period in England between the two world wars. Halperin considers the impact that these leading figures had on their era, as well as the extent to which they themselves were shaped by the age in which they lived.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

King George V, a monarch often deemed stodgy and reactionary; Elizabeth Bowen, a brilliant Anglo-Irish writer, exposed as a World War II English spy monitoring her native Ireland; St. John Philby, father of the notorious spy Kim Philby; and Nancy Astor, an American divorcee who became the first female member of Parliament, make up the quartet of personalities through which John Halperin explores a world of intrigue existing just below the glittering surface of Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Describing the age as simultaneously conventional and progressive, Victorian and modern, Halperin considers the impact that these leading figures had on their era, as well as the extent to which they themselves were shaped by the age in which they lived.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

The Georgian age to which Halperin (Life of Jane Austen, LJ 9/15/84) refers is that of King George V-primarily the Britain of the 1920s and 1930s. His format, a bow to Lytton Strachey's 1918 Eminent Victorians, is a quartet of life stories of significant figures-a king (George V); a novelist (Bowen); a "tycoon" and civil servant, father to a famous spy (Philby); and the first woman member of Parliament (Astor). His theme is the interplay of Victorian tradition and developing modernism, the way an age shapes its actors and the actors shape the age. His style is engaging, chatty, and vigorously opinionated, particularly about Lady Astor. An entertaining book and a good choice for most biography collections.-Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington

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