The fascinating volume, entitled A History of Spelsbury, and edited
by Miss Elsie Corbett (Long Compton, Shipston on Stour : the King's Stone Press : 6s. 6d.) is the work of .the local Women's Institute, which won the prize offered for village histories compiled by Women's Institutes 'in Oxford. Nothing could be better in its way, for the contributors have gathered a mass of historic and economic information, well arranged and skilfully edited, and have not forgotten the village tradi- tions and anecdotes which are all too seldom recorded in such books. But the main features of the volume for the general reader are the delightful chapters on the great house of - Ditchley, for which Lord Dillon has drawn freely on his archives and his famous collection of historic portraits. Lord Dillon's account of the real Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley, the stout old Elizabethan who is travestied in Scott's Woodstock, is of great interest. Notable, too, is the chapter on his daughter-in-law, Anne St. John, who by her second marriage was the mother of Charles II's notorious favourite, the second Earl of Rochester. Spelsbury under the Tudors and Stuarts was in close touch with national affairs, and the many letters which Lord Dillon prints are as attractive as the numerous reproductions of his pictures.
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