George Somes Layard

This is a biography of the old-fashioned type, that uses extensive extracts of diaries and letters, in haec verba, to tell the story of the subject's life. In this case, because a number of volumes of Brooks' diaries were missing, this can be a bit thin, though there are a lot of letters to somewhat fill the gap. You do get a good flavour of the character of Shirley Brooks, but it can be very tedious to wade through the vast amount of verbiage to get at the meat of the nut. A great many of the historical references and allusions are a bit misty today, well over 110 years after publication. Recommended for students of humour and editorial cartoons (since there's a fair amount of material on how Punch's famous editorial cartoons were drafted in conference), but not much beyond those specialties.… (plus d'informations)