SOURCE: Bell, Alan. “The Sharp Etonian Eye.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4091 (28 August 1981): 976.

In the following review, Bell praises Benson's diaries but questions the accuracy of them as presented in David Newsome's Edwardian Excursions.

David Newsome's On the Edge of Paradise gave a full introduction to A. C. Benson's life through his manuscript diary preserved in the library of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He now turns to its earlier volumes for a series of long extracts covering some of Benson's vacation activities during his last years as an Eton master, before he settled in Cambridge as a don and man of letters, devoting his literary talents to the lucrative but undemanding lower-middle reading public and his romantic yearnings to the better-looking youth of the university. The earlier diaries seem oddly timeless (helped by some of Benson's expressions—“sate”, “skipt”, “manufactory”) and the selection has the air of a book for...