PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 44, 20 August 1938, Page 26

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

The City Librarian has chosen "1649: A Novel of a Year," by Jack Lindsay, as the;book of the week, and has furnished: the following review:—

Mr. Norman Lindsay's sons are well to the fore * again this year, Philip Lindsay having produced another of his colourful hovels, "Bride for a Buccaneer," while Jack Lindsay in a less romantic, but no less pointed, vei* has gorie to the -year 1649 for a subject. : .

The year 1649 lingers in most people's memories as being -the year when Charles' I was: executed. The time of the. Stuarts was, of course, famous for political pamphleteering, religious invective, the speedy forma-, tion and often the speedy dissolution of numerous political or religious societies and sects. The year is divided into twelve months, each of which has a chapter to itself. The rank and file; of the army had been satisfied by the execution of the king, but the real revolutionaries were doomed to disappointment.-Those who formulated' the "Agreement of the People," such great leaaers in their own way as Winstanley,- Lilburne, and Overton, who had ranged themselves against Cromwell in their search tor a wider application of liberty, had stood for a dictatorship of the then rising middle classes. They were the Levellers arid their charter was the "Agreement of the People." After the execution, however, the agreement was shelved ahd'as' Mr; Lindsay views it, .the proceeds of victory went to the new political bosses. . The book is: to some extent a study in. disillusion; Cromwell is shown as something of an opportunist. The Levellers are, so to speak, exalted, while - such other political organisations as ithe Diggers, Royalist plotters, potential mutineers of the Army, add to the general-unrest of the time. Mr. Lindsay has adopted a device which - has Ibecome very popular, of recent years, arid which consists in using the everyday life of an ordinary fariiily as art" illustration of what is going on .in the nation. Perhaps the outstanding example of this technique is Mr.-Noel Coward's. "Cavalcade." Mr. Lindsay's characters" partake of the crudity, and directness of the age of which he writes. ■■" There is little subtlety of characterisation. The refineriient of civilised behayiour, has never appeared a trait of his characters. None tlie less the method is an effective one and'an occasional harshness of treatmeri.t pf, his subject serves to add a point to a topic which the author has made .interesting as well as clear. A-historical novelist can help the' public just as a .histonah can, to "see the delicate variations of form and colour of a particular period, by focusing the, microscope so that the blur becomes fixed at one particular point; and what has been vague becqrnes definite. ' /. ~ . RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS. Other titles selected; from recent accession lists are as" follows:—General: "The Waveless Plain," by W. F. Starkie; "Lilian Baylis," by S. Thorndike and R. Thorndike; "Madame Curie,"-by E.: Curie. Fiction: 'jPromenade," by.G.b B.^Lahcaster;- "Joseph in Egypt," by T... Mann;. "The Smallways Rub Along,"; by N.: Bell. |