Four portraits of Victorian heroes are written with irony and a novelist’s eye: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold of Rugby and General Gordon of Khartoum. Strachey opens by declaring that ignorance is the first requisite of the historian, then picks out revealing details to show the ambition, obstinacy and contradictions behind each public reputation.
The 1918 book that changed English biography, still sharp and still argued over. Download the free EPUB.