* * *

Have you noticed the way in which certain stories bear the mark of a
particular place or period? If ever there was a novel that vociferated
"Cambridge" in every line, _The Making of a Bigot_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON)
is that one. Well indeed may its paper wrapper display a drawing of King's
Chapel, though as a matter of fact only the action of the first chapter
passes in the University town. Miss ROSE MACAULAY has based her story upon
a quaintly attractive theme. Her hero, _Eddy Oliver_, is a type new to
fiction. _Eddy_ saw good in everything to such an extent that he allowed
himself to be persuaded into active sympathy with the aims of practically
everyone who was aiming at anything, however mutually irreconcilable the
aims might be. "He went along with all points of view so long as they were
positive; as soon as condemnation or rejection came in, he broke off."
Consequently, as you may imagine, his career was pleasantly involved. It
embraced the Church, various forms of Socialism, and at one time and
another some devotion to the ideals of Nationalism, Disarmament, Imperial
Service and the Primrose League. But please don't imagine that all this is
told in a spirit of comedy. Miss MACAULAY is, if anything, almost too dry
and serious; this, and her disproportionate affection for the word
"rather," a little impaired my own enjoyment of the book. It contains some
happily sketched types of modernity--all of them Cambridge to the
back-bone; and _Eddy's_ final discovery (which makes the bigot), that one
can't achieve anything in life without some wholesale hatreds, is genuine
enough--more so than the system of card-cutting by which he settles his
convictions. Miss MACAULAY has already, I am told, won a thousand pounds
with a previous book; this one proves her the possessor of a gift of
originality that is both rare and refreshing.

* * * * *

I could imagine a novel with which I could sympathise deeply, based upon
the theme of England's regeneration by means of the right type of Tory
squire, but it would be a novel with a more credible hero and conceived in
a less petty spirit of party bias than Mr. H. N. DICKINSON has given us in
_The Business of a Gentleman_ (HEINEMANN). For, in the first place, _Sir
Robert Wilton_, who figured of course in _Keddy_ and _Sir Guy and Lady
Rannard_--he has, in fact, by this time married _Marion_, late _Sir Guy's_
widow--is far too jumpy an