“Titles tell all.” Well no. The vast majority of books amount to far, far less than their titles, and do so  in scope, sources, style and significance. Very few provide less than their title, but this is one and very welcome with it. Ostensibly about eight Christ Church [The “House”] historians and their contribution in particular to the public purpose of Britain, the book is at once a powerful work of and about historiography, a collective biography, an intellectual autobiography and a brilliant read. 

It is ably researched, based on a commendably wide range of archival sources that are used with skill,  and also has a strong grasp of the writings of his subjects and of many others. I enjoyed it, which I can  say of very few works of historiography. Indeed moving from abstractions to individuals takes us a  long way in understanding a subject that is generally presented in an extraordinarily crude fashion, conceptually, methodologically, and empirically. Clearly, we would have loved more. The view from the pupils could be probed at length in future work by Davenport-Hines, and it would be good to hear more about those Students (Christ Church dons) only mentioned indirectly, such as Charles Stuart, who worked on Shelburne, a Christ Church Prime Minister. There might also be space for relations between the Students and publishers. 

One Christ Church product, Edward Nares, who rose to be Regius, helped by prime ministerial  friendship, declared in the preface to his 1828 three-volume life of Burghley: “he prides himself upon being an Englishman, an English Protestant, a Church of England man, a Divine.” This was the public politics of a historical world in which education was preparation, guidance, cultivation and  admonition. Davenport-Hines shows how his subjects, several of whom would have evaded, with more or less grace, Nares’ proclamation, understood their roles and fulfilled them, through education, whether self, group, or formal. In doing so, he very strongly takes issue with the modern nature of  university education, and its teaching of history in particular; although, fortunately, Christ Church today, thanks to Brian Young and others, is free from much of the current Grimpen Mire of bureaucratic and bogus-intellectual slough. As such, Davenport-Hines offers a Newman-like clarity. There is also a deep pessimism, one that is natural to thoughtful historians although made more potent by and in his account. 

I enjoyed this book. I am less keen on Trevor Roper, but, repeatedly, the judgments struck me as  apposite and the book had the unusual skill of making historiography exciting. The book works for  both the nineteenth century and the twentieth which is unusual. The pen portraits are wonderfully  economical: “Soon after his election as a Student Feiling married Caroline Janson, the daughter of a  Lloyd’s insurance broker. They had a daughter, who disappointed her class-conscious parents by marrying an unpolished South African, and a son, who worked in the War Office until he failed a  security vetting during the Whitehall purge of male homosexuality in the 1950s.” 

Both despite and because this book is about Christ Church, it is also about much in British history, its culture, society and politics. A book to savour.