27 FEBRUARY 1942, Page 24

The Admirals Hood. By Dorothy Hood. (Hutchinson. t8s.)

The Admirals Hood is rather a pity. The writer means to show us the eighteenth-century admirals of her family, how 60 rose to eminence and what they did. It is a book that might have illustrated far better than it does the working of the nasll traditith in one family—from the two eighteenth-century Hooch to descendants still in the Navy. But the historical frame is, to. -say the least, skimpy ; and within it the gallant admirals them- selves are neither well posed nor alive. Manuscript letters are freely, but not always well quoted. There is no real narrative. This is, in fact, an amateur book, with the faults of amateurisr.s Some entertaining pictures are reproduced—particularly the two by Benjamin West of Lord and Lady Hood,