Elizabeth Harman Pakenham Countess of Longford

The long, naughty life of Wilfrid Blunt (1840-1922)--poet, explorer, political maverick, incorrigible philanderer--should make for a great romp through the unbuttoned Victorian sub-world; and drily witty Lady Longford (Victoria R.I.) would seem to be an ideal biographer. Odd, then, that this rich brew is only intermittently invigorating--perhaps because Longford isn't selective enough (for U.S. readers anyway), perhaps because of something un-simpatico in Blunt himself. He was a sickly, beautiful, well-born boy with a confused, fatherless, religious upbringing; he became a teenage diplomat in Europe and quickly began his career as an amorist--his second amour was famed, homey courtesan ""Skittles,"" who went on to royal beds but remained Wilfrid's chum. And once afire, Wilfrid's arranged marriage to Byron's rich granddaughter Anne did nothing to cramp his style; she stoically averted her eyes while W.S.B. capered through 40 years of overlapping liaisons, mostly with married women (e.g. Mrs. William Morris), sometimes with blatant progeny. Anne also pluckily joined W.S.B. as he, again and again, announced some ""vita nova""--bursts of spiritual or political enthusiasm: roaming unmapped Arabia; saving Arabian horsedom; losing races for Parliament. And she shared the ostracism that came with W.S.B.'s prophetic, rabid anti-imperialism--loud support for Islamic nationalisms and Irish Home Rule (he even went to prison). But, though Blunt's Islamo-philia is timely and intriguing, Longford never seems to decide how much was vision, how much a Victorian version of radical chic. And though she taps the surefire comic side of satyriasis--the sheer excess, the Feydeau foulups, the unflappable gall--she never faces what comes across as downright pathology. (Anne finally left old W. to one of his ladies, and his last ill years were spent in feuds with his miserable daughter.) Add these fuzzinesses to the longueurs here--too much unshaped detail in the gossip and the travels--and it's a leisurely stroll through sin and politics that only Victoriana buffs will find a nonstop delight.

xvii, 314 p., p. of plates : 24 cm

Biography of the life of British Queen Victoria.

This sequel to Longford's well-received Wellington: Years of the Sword (1970) begins right after the Waterloo triumph, when the Duke, for reasons that are never made clear, retired in his prime from fighting and, after negotiations and pacifications in occupied Paris, came home to England to launch a vexed career as the highest of High Tory politicians in a time of great social upheaval, with a Prime Ministership ""killed by the [Reform] Bill."" Wellington's fears of Jacobinism and his opposition to Reform emerge without a sufficient grasp of the general disintegration of the Tory Party; but Longford is emphatic in her sympathies and makes a spirited and detailed defense, for example, of the Duke's role in suppressing the ""Captain Swing"" riots in Hampshire. For politically-minded readers there are theatrical accounts of each parliamentary crisis; for the rest there is a loving reconstruction of the Duke's private life. Longford, a descendant of Wellington's dowdy, neglected, inhospitable but virtuous and devoted wife, has done a great deal of research into the semi-love affairs, estate-building and family strains of this period of ""Arthur's"" life, and makes them alive and moving. For all its fullness, the book falls short as a political biography, and students of personality may protest that the Duke's austere, half-canny character has been over-tempered by granddaughterly reverence; but Longford's enthusiasm is engaging and should win the book its appropriate readership.

The acclaimed biographer recreates her own life, from her days at Oxford through her proximity to the core of English politics and letters.

Examines the lives of the Brontes, Florence Nightingale, Ellen Terry, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and five others.