It is hard not to believe that this series of essays is largely a spin off from Cannadine's authoritative study of the decline of the British aristocracy.
There is a vivid evocation, of Lord Curzon's Coronation Delhi Durbar of 1903, which showed not only his gift for organisation but his love of imperial display and pomp. The essay on Churchill emphasises how he always remained a man of his class and background, loyal to his own caste, and reveals how his wife Clementine detested the "three terrible Bs", Birkenhead, Beaverbrook and Brcndan Bracken, for what she saw as their bad influence on her husband. And an essay on that over exposed couple, Harold Nicolson and Victoria Sackville-West, strips bare the mythology and shows a pair of snobs and reactionaries, with only average talents, grimly bent on turning back a clock that persisted in going forward.