Shorter Notice
Arthur Mee's Oxfordshire. (Hodder and Stoughton. los. 6d.) THE subject and illustrations make this an attractive book, and it is perhaps needlessly unkind to compare it with the cheaper, smaller and perhaps better Shell Guide to the same county. The text includes plenty of historical information given in the rather archaic and noble idiom that one associates with Arthur Mee's books for children. There are fascinating biographies of the worthier born or buried in the various towns—i.e., Chaucer's granddaughter who married almost as often as the Wyf of Bath, became Duchess of Suffolk, and is buried in Ewelme, and Jane Dormer of Heythorp, bosom friend of both Mary Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots, and lady bountiful in Spain to Roman Catholics who had fled from Elizabethan England. The towns are arranged alphabetically, which sometimes has the effect of making the reader jump from the Thames Valley to the borders of Warwickshire, but it is difficult to think of an alternative without objections. The Oxford section itself is adequately done (and that is saying a good deal), and the pictures contrive to be unhackneyed.
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