THE BRAVE SPRINGTIME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 920, 29 March 1957, Page 12

THE BRAVE SPRINGTIME

ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS, by G. R. Elton; Methuen, English price 25/-. AN ELIZABETHAN, SIR_ HORATIO PALAVICINO, by Lawrence Stone; Oxford. Clarendon Press, English price 45/-. "| HESE books, both good in contrasting and complementary ways, illuminate a period of great interest for modern Englishmen. The Tudor age was

tough, rich and creative, and for those whose minds adjust themselves with some difficulty to Britain’s present status, Geoffrey Elton has given a penetrating account of her brave springtime. He is among those who have challenged established interpretations and re-exam-ined basic evidence. His figures live, his judgments are clear cut and courageous, and his style, though marred by occasional congestion, is racy to the point of colloqualism. Other scholars will assault some of his conclusions with the same confident vigour with which he has demolished the opinions of his predecessors. Not all will fully concede his estimate of the crucial importance of Thomas Cromwell, or the view of history implied in the thick peopling of the stage with so many vital and active political individuals. Nevertheless, this book presents sharply, often wittily, and with a force which stops short of truculence, the salient features and broad character of Tudor England. Lawrence Stone, on the other hand, has written a quiet, leisurely, life-like biography of an individual Elizabethan. Sir Horatio Palavicino was an Italian financier, in touch through family and business connections with the main trends of European economic life; trends explosively entangled with politics and religion. He was money-lender, speculator, public servant, a courtier in that small circle which exchanged personal New Year gifts with the Queen, intimate associate of the Cecils, father and

gon, and, in his last years, a middleaged man determined to found a family tooted in the soil. As a young Catholic, he literally danced with rage when the Recorder of London raided the Portuguese ambassador’s chapel during Mass, and 12 years later was an impetuous volunteer on the fleet that fought the Armada. Such men, indeed, lived dangerously. His brother was maimed by torture during the "cold war" arising from the Papal monopoly of alum-an essential element in Englend’s major in-dustry-and a span of fifty years covered both the accumulation of his fortune and its Genpetion by his unsubstantial heirs. All this story is told by Mr Stone agreeably and with scholarly control of a wide range of well-documented detail. The book is admirably presented, and makes good reading, though there is some repetition, and the writing is fluent rather than sparkling. Mr. Stone has placed firmly and attractively in the centre of the stage a man whose career illustrates many facets of an exciting and richly varied age.

F. L. W.

Wood