This book is a classic in two senses. On the good side, it is well-written, compelling, interesting, and emotionally gripping. It tells - with much detail and drama - one of the most dramatic events of WWII, the life of Hitler and his followers in the doomed bunker in Berlin. This is why it is still read today.

On the bad side, it had been written very shortly after the war, so it is naturally dated and inaccurate in certain issues - although not on any very important issues, and not due to the author's fault or lack of research. Rather, it is due to the fact that new material had come to light since then, especially since the opening of the Soviet archives after the collapse of the soviet union.

It is, in a sentence, a good starting point for anybody interested in the subject of Hitler's last days. Trevor-Roper's description of the main events have by and large stood the test of time and further research. Once you read this highly readable and important book, you can move on to books that include more recent rsearch, e.g. Toland's THE LAST 100 DAYS or Joachim Fest's HITLER - NEMESIS.

A scholarly & well-researched book written by Trevor-Roper who was then a British intelligence officer. Note that this is the 6th edition and there is a 7th edition available in the UK. The reader should also be aware that each edition builds on and revises some of older ones contents, including superseding some portions completely. Readers should also check out "The Death of Hitler" by Ada Petrova.

The review title is actually a quote from The Doors, but it is quite appropriate here to describe Hitler's last few days in the bunker as he says goodbye to his secretaries. HTR's book is very good. Initially, I believed the book was going to described Hitler's last days in the bunker on a day-by-day basis. This occurs only in the last half of the book. The first half deals with Hitler's court (Speer, Himmler, Bormann, Goebbels, Goering, Schellenberg, et.al.) and how they were handling the last days of the war. The last half of the book describes Hitler's last few days - his denunciation of Goering; his final betrayal by Himmler; Hitler's acceptance of the end; his suicide - all make for a very surreal ending when HTR describes Himmler's silly staff meetings just two days before the war's end - incredible. I read the 1947 version so there are a few suppositions which, actually, turn out to be correct - about Bormann's probable death at the Wiedenammer bridge - about Hitler's death and his capture of the ashes by the Russians. Great book.

Most of this book is about bygone days of imperial Russia. However, instead of being a typical "Nicholas and Alexandra" book or "How the Royal Family Lived", the passages here are first person accounts, recorded as memories, or as the actual journal entries.

Through this, the reader gets a picture of what it was like living in the upper echelon of society in the latter half of the 19th century, and the early 20th. It is striking and gorgeous.

This is the land and the society that these people later had to flee, and the author, Obolensky, grew up in the Russian emigre community in France.

There was a couple problems that found with this book. While the descriptions of these people's lives were fascinating, it wasn't a page turner, and for that reason, it took me a long time to actually sit down and FINISH this book.

A major problem with it, too, was it's heavy reliance on French. I know that some things are not translateable, and I know the author knows French very well (besides English), and I know that French was the language of many courts and of international diplomacy in that day, but it seemed like there were so many times when the author's point would be punctuated by a phrase in French, which did absolutely no good for me, since I don't speak or read this language.

The third thing that kind of irked me was that Obolensky spends probably 4/5 of the book in aristocratic Russia from 1875-1920, having many perspectives represented, but when it actually comes to the "exile" part, the only representation is his own experiences, and they seem, somehow, not to be nearly as in-depth. (Then again, he was jumping over HUGE periods of time.)

Despite its flaws, this book does serve to recall a time which is fast fading in memory. Most of the "authors" of this book died more than 40 years ago, and this perspective is unique to try to comprehend.

In a sequel to her _Plantagenet Chronicles,_ Hallam follows the same style and layout and indulges in the same lavishness of illustration. In addition to the four generations of monarchs in the title, one finds featured many of the other influential figures of the time, including St. Louis IX, William Wallace, Dante and Chaucer, Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, and even Jenghiz Khan. From the birth of the Age of Chivalry to the Black Death that killed almost half of Europe (and precipitated the decline of Norman-Angevin feudalism), these were what the old Chinese curse might regard as "interesting times."

This book is full of information and a good source for references which several historians have consulted when tackling the subject (which still remains surrounded in mystery) of Hitler's final days. It is a rather quick read, although a bit dry at times, and I must say it is also very depressing due to the subject matter. This is not, however, a criticism of the author. I think he did very well compared to most of his peers.

The mocking grace "To God much praise, and little laud to the Devil" reflected the opinion of many of William Laud's contemporaries - and also of several generations of Whig historians. To Macaulay and his ilk, Charles I's Archbishop of Canterbury was a stock villain, culpable for the royal policies that provoked the English Civil War.

Hugh Trevor-Roper's biography (first published in 1940; Phoenix Press reprints the very slightly revised 1961 edition) cannot be called a rehabilitation, but it does correct, and has largely superseded, the Whig caricature. (The Britannica entry on Laud, for instance, reads like a precis.) Instead of a Wolsey-like grand prelate, Laud is shown to have been an honest, hardworking man, notable both for extensive charities and for fostering Greek, Arabic and Persian studies. His most conspicuous faults were personal rudeness, excessive severity as a judge (even by the severe standards of the time) and political maladroitness. Though he left behind many volumes of writings, he never grasped the importance of propaganda or public opinion. His immediate reaction to opposition was clumsy suppression, an instinct that led him to advocate the forcible imposition of episcopal governance on the Scottish church. From the failure of the "Bishops' War" followed the disintegration of Charles' personal rule, the Short and Long Parliaments, civil war and Laud's own murder by Act of Parliament in 1645.

Trevor-Roper recounts Laud's career in, as one would expect, a lively and opinionated, yet thoroughly scholarly, fashion. He emphasizes high politics and ecclesiastical conflict but also directs attention to Laud's achievements as Chancellor of Oxford University, where his impact may have been more lasting than on either Church or State. There is little speculation about the Archbishop's private life, for which hardly any evidence survives. He never married, apparently kept no mistresses, lived unostentatiously and left behind almost no purely personal correspondence or anecdotes. Trevor-Roper surmises that he tended to have allies rather than friends, but the truth is unknowable.

Excellent though it is in most respects, "Archbishop Laud" suffers from distortion in one key area. The biographer takes it as a fundamental truth that 17th Century men were as secular in outlook as his own 20th Century circle of acquaintances. Therefore, religious principles must have been mere masks for social and political content. Men adopted Puritan or Arminian or Roman Catholic theology because they liked the political doctrines associated with those labels.

That premise is no doubt true of many figures of the day, but Trevor-Roper's own narrative exposes its dubiety in this particular case. The tenet that Laud advanced most persistently, in the teeth of massive opposition by both clergy and laity, was the importance of preserving continuity with the pre-Reformation Church. He was not sympathetic to Roman Catholicism but would not abandon traditional doctrines and rituals simply because they had been labeled "popish". In these views he followed Lancelot Andrewes and Richard Hooker, and it is largely because of his efforts that their species of "Anglo-Catholicism" lasted beyond the lifetimes of their personal disciples.

None of the distinctive issues addressed by the Andrewes-Hooker school is important to Trevor-Roper. Hence, he concludes, none of them could really have been important to Laud. The "true" reason for, say, upholding the mystical character of the Eucharist was evidently to strike a blow at enclosures, emigration and the pretensions of Parliament. Rather an indirect blow, one might think.

If one imagines that Laud's ostensible hierarchy of values was his real one, his life comes into clearer focus. Activities such as the promotion of scholarship and the recovery of the church's property rights were not disconnected enthusiasms but elements of a program for reinforcing the links between contemporary and ancient Christianity and safeguarding a refurbished church from the influence of modernist opinion. Likewise, his indifference to politically attractive pan-Protestant initiatives, a stance that puzzles Trevor-Roper, reflects his desire to hold the English church at a distance from Reformation theology.

Although Trevor-Roper pronounces Laud a "failure", the Laudian tradition held a prominent, occasionally preeminent, place in the Church of England for three hundred years, and from that base it has gained an extended, if attenuated, influence. The descendants of Puritan zealots now study the Fathers of the Church, take the sacraments seriously, pay heed to the continuity of Christian experience, celebrate the ancient holy days and even admit religious images into their sanctuaries. From the perspective of 1645, that is an astonishing evolution. There is no way to know what might have been, but one cannot help suspecting that today's Protestant Christianity would be much more drab, anti-historical and unintellectual had William Laud never lived.