26 OCTOBER 1929, Page 35

There is picturesque material in the life of Henry Mordaunt,

second Earl of Peterborough, who somehow captured Barcelona in 1705. But it cannot be said that General Ballard has made much of his opportunity in The Great Earl of Peterborough (Skeffington, 21s.). He is judicious in dealing with this one military episode in his hero's long career as a profligate and a politician. And he quotes Marlborough's pathetic account of Peterborough's visit to his headquarters in 1707 when "the ill weather hinders me from going abroad so that my Lord Peterborough has the opportunity of very long con- versations," adding that "what is said one day the next destroys so that I have desired him to put his thoughts in writing."