A MAN OF PARADOX

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 98, 19 January 1935, Page 19

A MAN OF PARADOX

Mr. John Buchan Writes of Oliver Cromwell

“Oliver Cromwell,” by John Buchan (London: Hodder ami Stoughton. 24/6). “A great man lays upon posterity the duty of understanding him. The task is not easy,” says Mr. John Buchan, discussing the magnitude of the task he attempts in this historical essay. The book is an analysis of the character and life of that “great bad man.” As an historian Mr. Buchan faces his task with the same spirit that is visible in his novels. He is both critical and able. Yet he is far from dry: the least interested reader will find his attention held throughout the tale; The author's background, that “shaggy England” had hardly emerged from the mediaeval darkness.

“The garden-laud with which we are to-day familiar was not yet,” lie writes. “There were great spaces of heath and down which were common pasture, ami the farms were like those of Picardy to-day, with fields unmarked except by the outline of the crop. A man could walk in primeval woodland from the Channel to the Tees, and on heath from the Peak to the Forth.”

• Cromwell is described as a man of paradox. Like Pompey, lie was suarum legum auctor ac stVbversor: a devotee of law, he was forced to be often lawless: a civilian to the core, he had to maintain himself by the sword; with a passion to construct, he was often forced to destroy; the most scrupulous of men, he had to ride roughshod over his own scruples and those of others. Although he took his sword in hand relatively late in life, he held it firmly. A man of action, jostled by circumstances, he hesitated often, and went doubtingly to indefinite ends He is a man much read of. and much remembered, yet there are few of the great figures of history harder to balance in the scales. But to estimate his. place on the page of history is rendered infinitely easier by this illuminating book.