rd Byron, Robert Browning, the Bishop of
London, Cardinal Howard, Lord Dunedin, Lewis Carroll, Lord Marcus
Beresford and the late Bishop of Manchester. The book also deals with club
life and the leading sportsmen.

_The Pomp of Power_ is by an author who very wisely remains anonymous,
like the author of _The Mirrors of Downing Street_. I shall not run the
risks of perjury by asserting or denying that the author of _The Mirrors
of Downing Street_ has written _The Pomp of Power_. As to the probability
perhaps readers of _The Pomp of Power_ had better judge. It is an
extremely frank book and its subjects include the leading personalities of
Great Britain today and, indeed, all the world. Lloyd George,
Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, Lord Haig, Marshal Joffre, Lord
Beaverbrook, Millerand, Loucheur, Painleve, Cambon, Lord Northcliffe,
Colonel Repington and Krassin of Soviet Russia are the persons principally
portrayed. The book throws a searchlight upon the military and diplomatic
relations of Britain and France before and during the war, and also deals
with the present international situation. It may fairly be called
sensational.

Especially interesting is the anonymous author's revelation of the role
played in the war by Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, so lately
assassinated in London. The author was evidently an intimate of Sir Henry
and, just as evidently, he is intimately acquainted with Lloyd George,
apparently having worked with or under the Prime Minister. He is neither
Lloyd George's friend nor enemy and his portrait of the Prime Minister is
the most competent I can recall. Can he be Philip Kerr, Lloyd George's
adviser?

I praise, in this slightly superlative fashion, the picture of the British
Prime Minister by the author of _The Pomp of Power_ ... and I pick up
another book and discover it to be E. T. Raymond's _Mr. Lloyd George: A
Biographical and Critical Sketch_. The author of _Uncensored Celebrities_
is far too modest when he calls his new work a "sketch." It is a genuine
biography with that special accent due to the biographer's personality and
his power of what I may call penetrative synthesis. By that I mean the
insight into character which coordinates and builds--the sort of biography
that makes a legend about a man.

Mr. Raymond does not begin with the "little Welshman" but with a Roman
Emperor, Diocletian, our first well-studied exemplar of the "coalition
mind." These are the words with which, after