DICKON. By Marjorie Bowen. (Hodder and Stoughton. 7s. ad.)—Miss Bowen's
latest book has for its setting the Wars of the Roses. We know her already as a careful chronicler and a vivid historian, but have never been so much aware as we are now of her very infectious sympathy towards her characters. She makes these as irresistible to her readers as they must be to herself. Her hero is Richard III., a very unfamiliar Richard to those of us brought up to believe in the wicked-uncle bogy, that hunchback murderer of small princes. In her preface the author says that she has presented the main figure of her tale "according to a sincere conviction of truth," and though we may be startled by her picture we cannot fail to be charmed, for the story of this new Richard, of the unstable Duke of Clarence, and of Edward, the knightly brother, is delightfully told. Miss Bowen has drawn a magnificent portrait of Warwick, and her little sketches of the women who suffered through civil war are very nearly perfect.
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