I cannot help thinking that "Again to the North" is a somewhat unnecessary book. It is an example of what Coleridge called the cacoethes notandi. It is a series of agreeable footnotes, a tieing up of loose ends which might better be left untied….

"Again to the North" is set, as to time, in the middle of the 1930s, and, as to place, all over the place. John Ogilvie and his daughter wander up and down between England, France, Italy, and Greece. John talks all the time. He talks about the iniquities of Hitler and Mussolini, and the sinister ambivalence of Stanley Baldwin in the matter of the air estimates, the abdication of Edward VIII. He talks about the biography of Beethoven and the inadequacy of modern poets. Rarely has the sight of quotation marks filled me with such anguish. It is not that the talk is poor...