Eminent Victorians - Lytton Strachey

What we are assured read once as searing and skewering, to modern eyes seems only the mildest ribbing. However, neither that nor a lack of familiarity with the period explored should dissuade one from enjoying this supremely catty publication, which forever altered that most ancient field of biography. 

Fine writing. Highly considered, witty, and brilliantly concise. Gone are the old hagiographies, jettisoned in favour of critical narrative and penetrating psychological insight. Full of autobiographically revealing implications, and subtle accusations. 

Three of the four once-eminent individuals whose well-digested lives the book seeks to reconstitute, are by contemporary standards so forgotten as to lend the title further dry irony. 

True Wangs, that is to say diehard fans of The Rest is History podcast, will enjoy especially the text’s final execration concerning one ‘Chinese’ Gordon's disastrous Sudanese appointment.