The County View
Norfolk Assembly. By R. W. Ketton-Cremer. (Faber, 28s.) Tins third collection of Norfolk essays by the biographer of Horace Walpole and Thomas Gray is at least the equal of its enchanting predeces- sors. It contains thirteen studies of a variety of aspects of Mr. Ketton-Cremer's native county between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, and their interest is more far-reaching and their importance greater than the book's modest title might suggest. Each essay brings its subject vividly to life against the background of its relationship to the main currents of national history.
The author has drawn, in almost every case, upon unpublished material. In his account, for example, of the great riot in Norwich in April, 1648, leading to a gunpowder explosion which cost many lives and which was long remembered as 'the great blowe,' he has consulted eye- witnesses' letters in the Bodleian Library, as well as the depositions of witnesses and the accused, which are preserved in the archives of the city of Norwich.
In an account of Acton Cremer who died in 1698, Mr. Ketton-Cremer salutes across the cen- turies a distant collateral and fellow-writer who worked hard and bargained hard, and whose sons and grandsons in consequence 'attained the rank of gentry,' and 'became landowners in a wide ring of parishes east and south of the Wash.' Acton Cremer, a feeble writer who experienced only the pains of authorship, waited long to be rescued from obscurity; but a quality of time- lessness is one of the many agreeable features of this book.
PHILIP MAGNUS
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