Robert Blake
SIR Penderel Moon's The British Conquest and Dominion of India (Duckworth, £60) costs less than a decent dinner for two in London and is a marvellous work of scholarship by a distinguished but unortho- dox Indian Civil Servant who writes with clarity, acumen and detachment. The Raj has long awaited its Gibbon. He has filled the gap. It is sad that he died before he could read of his almost universal acclaim.
Duff Hart-Davis's excellent edition of Volume II of the papers of Sir Alan Lascelles — In Royal Service 1920-36 (Hamish Hamilton, £14.95) — is compul- sive reading. Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales, he was an acute observer with a mordant pen. Eventually, despite the charm, he could no longer stand his utter selfishness; joining the secretariat of George V only to find himself again serving his former master when the old king died. I long to read Volume III. Sir David Wilson, the director of the BM, has produced in The British Museum, Purpose and Politics (BM Publications, £4.95) not only a clear, concise and very readable account of how the Museum functions, but a cutting indictment of some of its more idiotic critics in the media. Simon Jenkins of the Sunday Times would be well advised to shut up for ever on this subject. But I don't suppose he will,
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