COMPANION INTO OXFORDSHIRE
By Ethel Carleton Williams
But not, to be frank, an ideal companion. For one thing Miss Williams never writes about Oxfordshire, but only about churches and great houses and great families in Oxford- shire. The moment she gets the reader to a village she hies him straightway to the church and fills him as full of its history, its architecture, its brasses, its sculptures, as the most conscientious local cicerone could. Far too much of the 250 pages which 'make up the volume (Methuen, 7s. 6d.) is solid history too industriously transcribed. There are few descriptions of scenery, and those not distinguished, and where the writer records conversations of her own they are for the most part lacking in raison (rare. For anyone who knows the village and its greatest inhabitant Great Tew is an admirable test of method. Miss Williams rather strangely likens Lucius Caryto Rupert Brooke, states inaccur- ately that he was killed at the second battle of Newbury (it was, of course, the first) and can hardly be said to give an
adequate impression either of the incomparable society that Clarendon depicted, or of the unique charm of the church and its approach today. There is a good deal about sixteenth- century Ewelme, but no mention of the violent controversy aroused by Gladstone's presentation to the living there. Chipping Norton is omitted altogether. So is Oxford, but in this base deliberately and rightly, for Oxford is something apart from :Oxfordithire; and'- it •needs a- -volume to itself. This "companion" contains admirable illustrations, but there
is nothing in its text which a good guide-book would notu.OrdOtie-nrhatrtrepriee.--
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