Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the seventh Marquess of Londonderry, who died in 1949, will not be moved up the scale of historical significance even by so accomplished a book as this. Its author is unlikely to be disappointed. Ian Kershaw's purpose has not been to write a full biography, or to rehabilitate a politician he considers to have been unjustly neglected. Instead, by examining in great detail one specimen of a particular species, he has made another foray into a well-marked historical problem: why did certain sensible and decent persons in 1930s Britain persist in thinking the best of Hitler well after others, not evidently more sensible or decent, had come to think the worst?

LRB 2 June 2005 | PDF Download