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Oct. 3, 1934
2, Northmoor Road, Oxford.
Dear Col. Buchan,
I have now finished reading your book and I have read it with great pleasure & interest. So I can now talk it over with you any day we meet, though I have very little to criticise and misprints are rare, nor is there much I could criticise in your details and conclusions.
The best time for us to meet would be between 4.30 and 7.30 some afternoon & like you I shall be here
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through October. Thursday or Friday afternoon this week would suit me, & any day during the second week which suits your convenience. I should however like to have a couple of days warning so as to keep myself free from other engagements [my telephone number is 58181 in case you have to alter any arrangment, but at present I am not skilful enough for a conversation - a message would reach me].
I am not surprised by the success of your book. The few reviews I have seen did not do it justice. The reviewers - at least the last I read - wasted their time in comparisons between your life of C. and that of Belloc. His historical work is always inaccurate, prejudiced, and extravagant in its judgment of men & things. A comparison between your life and Morley's would have been of more value.
I think you succeed in achieving the aim stated in your preface - to give a portrait of a soul in its adventures through life, and the conclusions & summary set forth on pp. 517-531 seem to me to bear out your promise, and to be both just and well expressed.
Morley's object was a different
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one, and he also preferred to set the figure of Cromwell against the background of Europe and and contrast - him with great men of other countries and centuries.
It is more to the point to compare O.C. with Milton & Bunyan, & keep the figure in its English setting.
I noticed with interest some passages from the pamphlets of the time which I had missed, & others from familiar contemporary writers I should have liked to quote. But I was limited to 100,000 words & you had about twice that space at your command.
Yours truly
[ST: Professor] C.H. Firth [historian]
