[In the following review, Fulford outlines the contents of The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, a work edited by Fraser.]

[The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England] is a businesslike and readable account of our kings and queens from William I to Elizabeth II. The authors are not, as the Victorians used to say, "viewy", and they spare their readers too much of those personal stories by which kings and queens are particularly afflicted. Antonia Fraser opens with a spirited defence of royal biography which, she trenchantly argues, gives us a theory of history. Certainly no one would dispute her emphasis on the popularity of royal biography, and she even calls in aid that industrious spinster Agnes Strickland, who seems to be the first serious royal biographer to cause offence at Windsor. Her life of Queen Victoria in 1840 was fiercely annotated by the Queen.

Whether everyone would agree that the lives of our monarchs provide us with a theory of history is perhaps open to question, but they certainly give us a sensible boundary to the past within which an individual can deviate according to fancy. While it may not always have been by positive action, what our monarchs did or did not do has affected our lives for nearly a thousand years. Would cabinet government have progressed as it has if George I had the beautiful command of English enjoyed by his mother? This is borne out by John Clarke's excellent chapter on the Hanoverians, though King George's remark about hating pots and painters suggests some command of English and the capacity to express himself with unexpected originality and force.

It is certainly true that through studying the lives of our sovereigns we are able to catch some glimpse of the inner feelings of the nation. Lord Salisbury, in a public tribute to Queen Victoria, said that she had an extraordinary power of divining what the middle classes would think, and that was the moment when middle-class opinion was becoming all-powerful.

The difficulties of King Edward VIII reveal the strength of that opinion before it began to decline. Going back in history we can see that Henry II was largely absorbed by the struggles of family politics. The feelings of the English people were probably neither with Angevin or Capet but were much more concerned with the emergence of administrative government, about which public opinion probably felt far more strongly than about all the battles in the Dordogne. The experiences of James II clearly show the strength and almost morbid feelings of English people against Roman Catholicism. Maurice Ashley, in his chapter on the Stuarts, does well to remind us of the affinity with Europe which marked that unlucky dynasty—at least until the reign of its last member.

There is an especially good chapter on Edward II by Peter Earle, who says what may be said for that unhappy man, but rounds off his comment by saying that Edward II is a standing indictment of hereditary monarchy. Lord Eldon, emphasizing the prerogative of birth, observed that a king of England is always king. "King in the helplessness of infancy, king in the decrepitude of age." Though protected by regency, sovereignty belongs to primogeniture sanctioned by time and by popular opinion. Indeed we might argue that when primogeniture threw up a weakling—Edward II, Henry VI or possibly Charles I—the horrible convulsions of the time were to lead to valuable shifts of power.

The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England is well written and terse, and a particular word of gratitude and commendation is due for the illustrations and explanations of the various arms of the sovereigns supplied by J. P. Brooke-Little, the Richmond Herald of Arms.