POLITICS AND CHURCH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 742, 2 October 1953, Page 13

POLITICS AND CHURCH

THE PRIME MINISTER, by Anthony Trollope, two volumes. English_price, 36/-. THE WARDEN, by Anthony Trollope, one volume. English price, 15/-. Both published in The Oxford Trollope, by Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press. "| HE appearance of these two books in the sumptuous Oxford reprint has a special interest for lovers of Trollope, for the stories represent the two main streams of his activity, politics and the church. As L. S, Amery points out in his introduction to The Prime Minister, the fifth "political" in this edition, Trollope put everything he had into Plantagenet Palliser, now Duke of Omnium, as Prime Minister, but had to admit that the book failed with the public. "It was worse spoken of by the Press than any novel I had written." On the other hand, The Warden, a much slighter work, though it made no sti at the time, opened up the vista of life by which Trollope is most widely remembered. The world takes far more delight in Mr. Harding, Mrs. Proudie., Dr. Grantly and Mr. Crawley, than in the Duke, Lady Glencora and Phineas Finn. ; Despite its faults, The Prime Minister is a notable book. Amery’s long ex- perience in high politics must have helped him to explain why © Trollope did not do better with the Duke. Trollope, he says, was completely incapable of being interested in or of understanding political issues as such. He despised Disraeli’s political novels, but they are much closer to the realities of politics than his. own, The well-known Catholic critic, Monsignor Ronald Knox, writes the preface to The Warden in the form of an introduction to the Barsetshire series, and he discusses this chronicle of a Protestant society with understanding, wit and charm. Readers of Trollope will prize these two volumes, and they will welcome the indication that the rest of the Barset series is to follow.

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