This has all the appearance of a book invented by a publisher. Two years ago W. Sydney Robinson published an excellent biography of the Victorian newspaperman W.T. Stead. How best to follow this? No attractive subject for another full-scale biography suggested itself. Why not therefore fill in time by writing long essays on four worthies from the generation that followed Stead? And so we have: ‘A Daring Reassessment of Four Twentieth Century Eccentrics: Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Dean Inge, Lord Reith and Sir Arthur Bryant.’