1 MAY 1971, page 19

Patrick Wormald On Rome

Rome in the Dark Ages Peter Llewellyn (Faber £2.75) Perhaps only Thomas Hodgkin, since Gib- bon, has seriously concerned himself with the most obscure and least glamorous period......

Auberon Waugh On New Fiction

Recent advances in psychiatry may or may not have made a significant contribution to the treatment of the insane—I like to keep an open mind about that sort of thing—but nobody......