P HILIP Z IEGLER I normally get little pleasure from historical whodunits,
but C. J. Sansom’s Sovereign (Macmillan, £19.99) is both marvellously exciting to read and a totally convincing evocation of England in the reign of Henry VIII. Peter Hennessy’s Having It So Good (Penguin/Allen Lane, £30) carries on from his magnificent Never Again: Britain 19451951 and describes every aspect of British life during the 1950s. Hennessy combines the balance and authority of a historian with the brilliantly selective eye of the investigative journalist; most notably, he extracts enormous pleasure from his researches and communicates it to his readers. Those who lived through the 1950s will find old memories stirred; those who are younger will understand their present much better for this evocation of the past. If the gods gossip, this is how it would sound.
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