Downhill All the Way

The late Christopher Hill—arguably not A. N. Wilson's beau ideal as a historian—once told me a small joke in his mildly stuttering style. It seemed that the fifth or sixth husband of Barbara Hutton had been interviewed on his nuptial night, and when asked how he felt at being the latest to possess the celebrated Woolworth heiress, had replied, "Well, I know what I have g-got to d-do, but I am not quite sure how I am going to make it i-i-i- interesting ."

Some of the same apprehensiveness may descend upon anyone who undertakes to write about the eclipse of British power in the first half of the twentieth century. The basic outlines—or, if you prefer, the essential holds and grapples and maneuvers—are tolerably well known. Death of the Old Queen in 1901; a nasty and expensive war in South Africa ...