Monday 20 May 2019

'Staggeringly silly'

It's fair to say that Jacob Rees-Mogg has suffered a critical mauling for his book The Victorians. Dominic Sandbrook's comment that it wouldn't have been published had it been written by anyone else is rather redundant. Of course it wouldn't – it's just an attempt to cash in on his fame/infamy, with no regard to the quality of the writing or the historical research. Rather like with Boris Johnson's biography of Churchill. I tried to read some of that, but it was really pretty awful.

I almost want to read this to see if it is as bad as they say, but I think I'll take AN Wilson's word for it. He's hardly a raving leftist, so has no particular political axe to grind, and he has himself written a generally well received and readable history of the Victorian era.

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