EPISODES IN A VARIED LIFE By Lord _ Conway of
Allington
Few men' have had a more interesting career than Lord Conway of Allington, whose Episodes in a Varied Life (Country Life, 15s.) is uncommonly readable and amusing. One thinks of him first as a mountaineer whose exploits in the Karakorams and the Andes and in Spitsbergen are not less remarkable than his many climbs in the Alps. He has much to say about Whymper and Mummery and other famous climbers, but with great self-restraint he does not let the mountains fill the book. He recalls his friendship at Cam- bridge with that astonishing man, Henry Bradshaw, the University Librarian, who set him to study Flemish woodcuts and thus led him on to become a leading expert on the history of mediaeval art. Politics, as the author confesses, has been but a side-line, though he represented the Northern Universi- ties for a dozen years and enjoyed the social side of the House of Commons. He describes with enthusiasm his discovery and rebuilding of his- old Kentish castle, which dates from the reign of Edward I. He recalls his world-wide travels and his meetings with famous men like the Pope and Signor Mussolini; and he ends with an amusing chapter on the now defunct National Club with its Evangelical founders, and on the Savile Club when Sidney Colvin, R. L. Stevenson, W. E. Henley and other early members were in their prime. Lord Conway tells a story well and lets his memory guide him as he writes, so that the book is delightfully inconsequential— in happy contrast to the usual type of formal autobiographies.
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