A History...Completed
Tim RESTORATION OF CHAitt.ti§ II, 1658-1660. By Godfrey Davies. (0.U.P.; 55s.)
IT, is nearly a hundred years since S. R. Gardiner began to write his History of England from the accession of James I to the Restoration. By the time of his death in 1902 he had reached 1656: Sir Charles Firth took up his pen and struggled to 1658. Firth was not a fast writer and he got no further. Mr. Godfrey Davies has laboured for thirty years and at last brought Gardiner's work to a con- clusion. Apart from his stamina, there is little to praise. His book is painstaking, scholarly, and accurate, yet monumentally dull and grandiosely obtuse. An unrelieved narrative approach is used to drag the reader through thickets of detail. Cromwell's generals were a fascinating crew, but Mr. Davies prefers the minutes of committees to the vagaries of human temperament. And he pays absolutely no attention to the social and economic pressures which gave meaning to these troubled years. Narrative is his business. The result,
though worthy, is unreadable. J. H. PLUMB
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