Books in Brief

Newspaper Story: One Hundred Years of the Boston Globe, by Louis M. Lyons (Harvard, 482 pp., $9.95). In this nicely illustrated, anecdotal history, the dean of Boston journalists recounts the life of his journal and describes in vivid detail the operations of newspapers generally, winding up with an institutional history a cut far above most. The Globe became one of America’s great liberal dailies, along the way giving brilliant coverage to such incidents as the case of Lizzie Borden (who “took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks; when she saw what she had done, gave her father forty-one”); the horrible Coconut Grove fire; the Sacco-Vanzetti case; Lyons’ 1940 interview with Joseph Kennedy which, despite Kennedy’s later complaint that he had instructed that the discussion remain off-the-record, wound up in print, causing such a stir that the Founding Father resigned his ambassadorship to Britain; and much more. Mr. Lyons’ wry wit is apparent as he sketches the men and women who made the Globe and the public figures made and unmade by the paper. His writing is Yankee-spare, yet leaves out practically nothing, which may make it too much for some but certainly makes it good reading for us journalism nuts. For 27 years a Globe reporter, for two decades curator of Harvard’s Nieman Fellowships for journalists, and forever, it seems, voice of the news on New England public television, Louis Lyons is a cantankerous, opinionated liberal who doesn’t lose many opportunities in his book to dig needles gently into the other side—sometimes, I think, he doesn’t know that there’s anything respectable on the other side—or to show where Truth lies. Although Mr. Lyons is still fighting the (Joe) McCarthy wars in the last pages, and rather oblivious to the lamentable turn to the left taken of late by his beloved Globe, Newspaper Story is a model account of a notable newspaper written by a journalist’s journalist. d. J. c. brudnoy

The Prince and His Lady: The Love Story of the Duke of Kent and Madame de St. Laurent, by Mollie Gillen (St. Martin’s Press, 282 pp., $8.95). George Ill’s sons have fared badly at the hands of historians—not that contemporaries had much to say for them either. For Queen Victoria they were “my wicked uncles.” But now the work of rehabilitation is under way. From the loyal Dominions comes a sympathetic account both of Victoria’s father’s 27 years with his chère amie, the bourgeoise, provinciale, and thoroughly decent Thérèse-Bernadine, and of his brief military career, which coincided with the first period of their liaison. The Australian-

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Newspaper Story: One Hundred Years of the Boston Globe, by Louis M. Lyons (Harvard, 482 pp., $9.95). In this nicely illustrated, anecdotal history, the dean of Boston journalists recounts the life of his journal and describes in vivid detail the operations of newspapers generally, winding up with an institutional history a cut far above most. The Globe became one of America’s great liberal dailies, along the way giving brilliant coverage to such incidents as the case of Lizzie Borden (who “took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks; when she saw what she had done, gave her father forty-one”); the horrible Coconut Grove fire; the Sacco-Vanzetti case; Lyons’ 1940 interview with Joseph Kennedy which, despite Kennedy’s later complaint that he had instructed that the discussion remain off-the-record, wound up in print, causing such a stir that the Founding Father resigned his ambassadorship to Britain; and much more. Mr. Lyons’ wry wit is apparent as he sketches the men and women who made the Globe and the public figures made and unmade by the paper. His writing is Yankee-spare, yet leaves out practically nothing, which may make it too much for some but certainly makes it good reading for us journalism nuts. For 27 years a Globe reporter, for two decades curator of Harvard’s Nieman Fellowships for journalists, and forever, it seems, voice of the news on New England public television, Louis Lyons is a cantankerous, opinionated liberal who doesn’t lose many opportunities in his book to dig needles gently into the other side—sometimes, I think, he doesn’t know that there’s anything respectable on the other side—or to show where Truth lies. Although Mr. Lyons is still fighting the (Joe) McCarthy wars in the last pages, and rather oblivious to the lamentable turn to the left taken of late by his beloved Globe, Newspaper Story is a model account of a notable newspaper written by a journalist’s journalist. d. J. c. brudnoy

The Prince and His Lady: The Love Story of the Duke of Kent and Madame de St. Laurent, by Mollie Gillen (St. Martin’s Press, 282 pp., $8.95). George Ill’s sons have fared badly at the hands of historians—not that contemporaries had much to say for them either. For Queen Victoria they were “my wicked uncles.” But now the work of rehabilitation is under way. From the loyal Dominions comes a sympathetic account both of Victoria’s father’s 27 years with his chère amie, the bourgeoise, provinciale, and thoroughly decent Thérèse-Bernadine, and of his brief military career, which coincided with the first period of their liaison. The Australian-