IN TUDOR TIMES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 187, 4 May 1940, Page 15

IN TUDOR TIMES

The Life Of Catherine Of Aragon “Catherine of Aragon,” a biography by Francesca Claremont (London: Robert Hale). This is quite a monumental work in its own fashion. The author appears to have unlimited knowledge of her period, but her style can best be described as “chatty.” This has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. The casual reader, perhaps, does not expect to be very interested in Catherine of Aragon, but almost against the will reads on to find out what did happen. The book has this very human quality about it. There is the shadowy figure of the little Catherine living in camps while her indomitable mother is at the Moorish wars, and then the child growing up with her sisters and brother at the beautiful Alhambra, after the fall of Granada. It is all very picturesque. Then comes the frightful tangle of relationships at the Court of Henry Tudor. The head whirls, footnotes distract the attention, the reader is almost about to give up, when Arthur, Prince of Wales, appears and Catherine duly marries him, while Henry VII haggles with Isabel and Ferdinand about the dowry. 2nd so it goes oninvolved and often perplexing, but with so much interesting incident, the historical names becoming first so many human beings, that on goes the reader, too. A good portrait of Catherine emerges—in many xespects not unlike her mother —blit the old Latin world of Spain impinged on the new world of the Renaissance, when Catherine came to England. The way was dillicult for Catherine and cost her much suffering. This is a book for laymen rather than’historians, but it survives its faults and gives the impression of drawing a very sincere picture of Catherine of Aragon.

PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS “Philosophical and Literary Pieces,” by Samuel Alexander (London: Macmillan). Here is a selection of essays and addresses by the late Samuel Alexander, 0.M., honorary professor of philosophy in the University of Manchester. 'They show Hie author of “Space, Time and Deity” at his best, illustrating the breadth of his wisdom and the diversity of his reading. The book has been edited by Professor John Laird, who also contributes a memoir which is very successful in recreating the personality of a man eminent in philosophy and remarkable for the great number of people who felt honoured to know him as a friend.