As ever, the Spectator carries some splendid and erudite book reviews this week. There are contributions from stellar writers and thinkers such as Margaret MacMillan, Susan Hill, Alexander Chancellor and John Sutherland. Here is a selection.
Margaret MacMillan is captivated by Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, a ‘lovely lush book’ edited by Angus Trumble. But, even as she peruses the glorious pictures and accompanying essays, her mind cannot escape the horrors of what the painters had overlooked and what was to come:
‘The Edwardian nostalgia, well-illustrated here, for an older world was rather like the passion for organic farming and the slow food movement of today: a longing to return to a simpler world without giving up all the benefits of the modern. Edwardian painters generally showed sunny landscapes with children playing and happy labourers. They had less to say about the miseries of rural poverty.’
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