Gertrude Himmelfarb (1922–2019)

I read only the chapters on Buchan, whose work I know very well, and Bentham, who I know hardly at all.

The Bentham chapter was the better of the two. Bentham's lifelong obsession with the Panopticon provides a strong narrative drive. Also, as Bentham's plans are, to quote Wayland Smithers "unconscionably fiendish" -- at one point extending to include a national archipelago of panopticon-style poorhouses where the indigent and their children would be worked and subject to the governance of show more the super-intendant. A person Himmelfarb plausibly argues Bentham meant from the beginning to be none other than himself. With that as background it is hard not to read comments from Bentham in the voice of a cartoon villain: "But for him [King George] all the paupers in the country, as well as all the prisoners in the country, would have been in my hands."

The Buchan chapter is a very good essay. Sympathetic to Buchan, but to my admittedly partisan eye, not sympathetic enough. It also contains a material error of interpretation (the same one, interestingly, noted here by a critic of Nancy Goldstone: https://www.wsj.com/articles/buchan-wasnt-any-kind-of-bigot-1441045584).

Her final paragraph is I think thoughtful, stimulating, and not fully correct:

Buchan - Calvinist in religion, Tory in politics, and romantic in sensibility - is obviously the antithesis of the liberal. It is no accident that he was addicted to a genre, the romantic tale of adventure, which is itself alien to the liberal temper. For what kind of romance would it be that feared to characterize or categorize, to indulge the sense of evil, violence, and apocalypse? It is no accident, either, that the predominance of liberal values has meant the degeneration of a literary form so congenial to the Tory imagination. show less

I have no idea if her history is accurate or if this woman is a total fruitcake, but I do know that I really enjoyed reading this book. Himmelfarb writes very well, and her unconventional approach to the Victorian era gave me another viewpoint to add to my existing ideas about that time.

In many of her books Himmelfarb writes 'against the current' and gives her own contrary view to some widely held opinion of an author or public figure. That is certainly the case with this book, and in most cases she brings it off well. The essays in this book are reprinted from older publications (some from quite some time ago) and some are in fact book reviews (e.g., the essays on the Knoxes and Churchill). The most thoughtful are those on Mill (in which H. uncovers an utterly different show more philosopher from the one you thought you knew), Lionel Trilling (which offers some useful explanation to Trilling's famous remark on conservative ideas), and John Buchan (which defends B. against all sorts of silly charges of racism). show less

A collection of witty, elegant and precisely-written essays on history, liberty, nationalism and footnotes. Cannot be recommended highly enough.