HOME LIFE IN HISTORY. By John Gloag and C. Thompson
Walker. Illustrated by A. B. Read. (Ernest Berm. 12s. 6d.)-Here is an ingenious and amusing book which depicts " social life and manners in Britain from 200 D.C. to A.D. 1926," in eighteen chapters. We follow the fortunes of an imaginary family from age to age, see how its members lived, what they wore and ate, and, sometimes, what they said. Mr. C. R. L. Fletcher enlivened his well-known history with some delightful chapters on the squires of Tubney. but there is plenty of room for variations in the same idea. The authors are not writing for children. They probably know that most modern children are more familiar with social history than their elders are. " Bad as our urban con- ditions often are, there is not a slum in the country which has a third of the infantile death rate of the royal family in the Middle Ages." This sentence, quoted by the authors from J. B. S. Haldane, is meant to startle the reader and will probably do so. Yet it should be a commonplace.
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