TUDOR VERSUS STUART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20762, 3 January 1931, Page 8 (Supplement)

TUDOR VERSUS STUART.

NOVELISED HISTORY. " For ever she lives in the world's heart, loveliest, most unhappy, in a glory spiritual yet shot with the red tlame of human and most womanly passion, half-saint, half queen of men, for ever most royal, immortally lovely." Whether history, that tale of human achievements, of human error, human love, and human hate—whether such a story can ever submit to the cold and precise tabulations of the scientific method, is a moot question. There is, however, no doubt that such coldblooded methods do not appeal to writers like E. Harrington. History for them is but a huge novel, containing characters that arouse admiration, sympathy, or aversion. So in "The Duel of the Queens," tho story of the long-drawn-out struggle between Mary, Q-ieen of Scots and Elizabeth, of England, the author is passionately on the side of tho lovely Mary The crowded incidents of her short and stormy life, are related with skill, and the book as a whole is a worthy addition to Mrs. Barrington's gallery of novelised historical portraits. " The duel of the Queens," by E. Barrington. (Cassell.)