Hugh Trevor-Roper
Ought Jonathan Dimbleby's Prince of Wales (Little, Brown, £20) to have been published? Like some others, I thought not — until I had read it. Had all those commentators who rushed to deplore it read it through? I suspect not: they took it from a misleading serialisation. But having read it all (it is admittedly much too long) I found it fascinating: not just another round in a tedious private controversy, artificially prolonged, but a serious book on a serious person with genuine and legitimate public interests and individual ideas — and Os° an individual style, colourful, flexible. I am charmed by the Prince's use of language and do not mind his heresies. When we are saddled with such boring politicians, it is agreeable to think that we shall have (pace poor old Paul Johnson) a literate and interesting king.
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