27 DECEMBER 1930, Page 25

When Mr. Gladstone's surviving executor presented to the British Museum

a few months ago the mass of his father's important papers, the Times published a series of eight selections from them. These have been reprinted as a small book, The Gladstone Papers (Cassell, 5s.). It will be remembered that they were not chosen for political interest, but deal chiefly with Eton and Oxford, literary and social matters. The thrilling story of the mutiny of the Bounty ' and its aftermaths has often been told, and parts of it arc retold and retold well in Mr. Geoffrey Rawson's Bligh of the Bounty (Philip Allan, 10s. Od.). But Bligh, whose harsh and brutal tyranny was in part responsible for the mutiny, had other sides to him. He was a fine seaman and a gallant fighter, being personally praised for the handling of his ship at Copen- hagen by Nelson himself ; he had an active and inquiring scientific mind ; and he took part in one of the most ludicrous incidents of early Australian history, when as Governor of New South Wales he was put under arrest and kept there for a year by one of his own subordinates. Mr. Rawson has handled Bligh's whole story in a thoroughly fair and enter- taining way, and has made a most readable book of it all. Ile might perhaps note that the Battle of Flodden was not, as lie states on p. 189, fought in the year '45,

« • * *