21 FEBRUARY 1903, Page 24

Silk and Steel. By H. A. Hinkson. (Chatto and Windus.

6s.) —This is a story of the days of Charles I., to which the adjective " bustling " is eminently appropriate. From Whitehall to the Netherlands, Paris, and Ireland is the hero hurried, and the reader has the delightful feeling that the gentleman's head never sits safely on his shoulders for more than two consecutive pages. Politically Mr. Hinkson writes with a distinctly Royalist bias, but the story is not long enough for the King to "have his own again" at the end.