Books in Brief

Regina vs. Palmerston, by Brian Connell (Doubleday, $5.95). Selections from the unbelievably voluminous correspondence between Victoria and the crusty viscount who served as her Foreign Minister and Prime Minister during many of the years from her accession in 1837 to his death in 1865. Those were the days before typewriters, let alone ghosts, and these two imperious personalities spent literally hours every day inditing lengthy longhand memoranda to each other in the arch third-person form prescribed by contemporary protocol: “The Queen sends Lord Palmerston a letter from Dr. Kuper to the Duchess of Kent; perhaps Lord Palmerston could do something for the young man.”—”Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty and begs to submit that there would be much difficulty in complying with Mr. Kuper’s wishes…” How much of this you can take depends upon the depth of your interest in British politics, statecraft and constitutional development during the nineteenth century. Beyond that, however, this redoutable pair affords an inviting contrast to their modern successors. With a Victoria at Windsor, and a Palmerston at Number Ten, one suspects that K & B would never have been invited to tea—and would not have enjoyed it nearly so much, if they had been. w. a. rusher

J. Bracken Lee: The Taxpayer’s Champion, by George B. Russell (Robert Speller & Sons, $4.95). A very much authorized biography, preparatory to the volatile Utah conservative’s campaign for the U.S. Senate next year. The book covers everything from Lee’s refusal to pay his federal income tax in 1956 (“It’s a violation of the Constitution because that doesn’t give Congress the right to tax me or any American for the support of foreign governments”) to a graph of the former Utah Governor’s family tree. The only question the books fails to answer is why Salt Lake City Mayor Lee plans to oppose conservative Republican Bennett in 1962, rather than wait to run against Liberal Democrat Moss in 1964. A. E. GOLLAN

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Regina vs. Palmerston, by Brian Connell (Doubleday, $5.95). Selections from the unbelievably voluminous correspondence between Victoria and the crusty viscount who served as her Foreign Minister and Prime Minister during many of the years from her accession in 1837 to his death in 1865. Those were the days before typewriters, let alone ghosts, and these two imperious personalities spent literally hours every day inditing lengthy longhand memoranda to each other in the arch third-person form prescribed by contemporary protocol: “The Queen sends Lord Palmerston a letter from Dr. Kuper to the Duchess of Kent; perhaps Lord Palmerston could do something for the young man.”—”Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty and begs to submit that there would be much difficulty in complying with Mr. Kuper’s wishes…” How much of this you can take depends upon the depth of your interest in British politics, statecraft and constitutional development during the nineteenth century. Beyond that, however, this redoutable pair affords an inviting contrast to their modern successors. With a Victoria at Windsor, and a Palmerston at Number Ten, one suspects that K & B would never have been invited to tea—and would not have enjoyed it nearly so much, if they had been. w. a. rusher

J. Bracken Lee: The Taxpayer’s Champion, by George B. Russell (Robert Speller & Sons, $4.95). A very much authorized biography, preparatory to the volatile Utah conservative’s campaign for the U.S. Senate next year. The book covers everything from Lee’s refusal to pay his federal income tax in 1956 (“It’s a violation of the Constitution because that doesn’t give Congress the right to tax me or any American for the support of foreign governments”) to a graph of the former Utah Governor’s family tree. The only question the books fails to answer is why Salt Lake City Mayor Lee plans to oppose conservative Republican Bennett in 1962, rather than wait to run against Liberal Democrat Moss in 1964. A. E. GOLLAN