John Stewart Collis
Bismarck by Edward Crankshaw. I need not explain this choice since I have just reviewed it for the Spectator. I would only add that it is one of those rare biographies which contain passages you want, to read again because of striking thought supported by great felicity of language.
Havelock Ellis by Phyllis Grosskurth (Allen Lane). A really remarkable essay in research encompassing the avant garde thought from 1860 to 1940. It is also a human document of great interest, for the hero, while shown as one of the most influential of modern pioneers, is also revealed as a soft man unable to deal with hard women.
The Pupil by Monk Gibbon (Wolf Hound Press, Dublin). This book, without the slightest straining after effect, is essentially a poem. The mise en scene is a school in Dorset where the author was a teacher, and where, keeping his distance, he loved one of the pupils called Anne. By virtue of a totally unsentimental approach, he says more about true love, and true poetry, than one would have thought possible.
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