MISCELLANY

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28234, 23 March 1957, Page 3

MISCELLANY

The Hungry Heart. A Romantic Biography of James Keir Hardie. By John Cockburn. With 29 Illustrations. Jarrolds. 286 pp.

This biography of Keir Hardie, the famous pioneer of the British Labour Movement, is written in an effort to interest modern British youth in “a great man of the people.” Mr Cockburn employs the style of popular journalism. with plentv of Scots phrases thrown in, and a generous pepping-up of the narrative with totally imaginary conversations By this means he hopes to persuade the younger generation, “who make great heroes of TV and recording artists.” to turn their attention for a change to “the greater and largely unsung heroes of the pioneering years, the men who worked selflessly, tirelessly. and fearlessly to bring the vastly improved conditions that they enjoy today.” It is hard to believe that he will be successful in this aim: nor can one be certain that it is desirable that he should be so. The endless inveighing against the evils of capitalism and the villainies of employers are not only dated and tedious, but filled with a classhatred and envy so bitter that the idea cannot be avoided that modern youth’s enthusiastic admiration of its heroes of the entertainment world is possibly a more healthy emotion than all this bitterness masquerading as idealism.

The Merry Wives of Battersea, and Gossip of Three Centuries. By A. M. W. Stirling. Illustrated. Hale. 224 pp.

Mrs Stirling is the present owner of Old Battersea House, an ancient manor by the Thames long associated with the illustrious house of St. John. In this book of what she accurately describes as “gossip of three centuries,” she has collected accounts and anecdotes of the occupants of Battersea and their friends and associates, straying often also into random jottings which have nothing to do with Battersea, but illustrate the “Zeitgeist” <a favourite word with Mrs Stirling) ot the period she is talking about. Such personages as Rochester Pope, Bolingbroke, Clarendon, and Chesterfield pass through her pages, as well as many brilliant or unfortunate women, some eccentrics. and a group of nineteenth century literary figures— Browning, Wilde, Shaw, the PreRaphaelites (in particular William and Evelyn de Morgan) and William Morris. The work has its interesting glimpses and a few new anecdotes, but it is hardly coherent and the style is wordy and full of romantic cliches.