The Whigs were one of the two great English political parties in the 150 years after 1700, vastly influential whether in office or in opposition. Yet the Whigs were much more than simply a group of politicians. An exclusive set, composed of the greatest and wealthiest families, the Whig world was a self-contained and small one, impervious to outside criticism. With members such as Charles James Fox, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Lord Byron, its gambling, loose-living, drinking and wit was notorious. The Whig World is a portrait, of which politics forms only a small part, of an...
The Whigs were one of the two great English political parties in the 150 years after 1700, vastly influential whether in office or in opposition. Y...
Maurice Bowra was, according to one's point of view, either the most distinguished or the most notorious Oxford don of the early twentieth century. Classicist, poet, wit, raconteur extraordinary, and Warden of Wadham College for over thirty years, he met nearly everyone of consequence in the worlds of literature and politics and had stories to tell about them all, from Jean Cocteau to Virginia Woolf, from Adolf Hitler to the Kennedys, from Isaiah Berlin to Charlie Chaplin. By force of personality and intellectual range, he influenced the thinking of almost everyone with whom he came into...
Maurice Bowra was, according to one's point of view, either the most distinguished or the most notorious Oxford don of the early twentieth century. Cl...
