Two hundred years from now, the reader who is
interested in the early twentieth century will have no
difficulty in finding out all that he wants to know about
George V, Earl Haig, Colonel Lawrence, and Mr.
Bernard Shaw. History can be trusted to look after
her own; and Mr. Shaw--admittedly with excellent
material to work upon--has taken good care that he shall
not be forgotten. But if the curious reader meets which
the name of Horatio Bottomley, or Amy Johnson, or
George Robey, or if he comes across a reference to
Buchmanism or Aston Villa, he will no doubt experience
some difficulty in finding out who or what they were,
and why they were so celebrated in their own day. Yet
if he wants to understand the early twentieth century,
and to know what men and women were really like in
that period, he is much more likely to get the right
answer by rediscovering the Bottomleys and the Robeys
than by fastening his attention exclusively upon their
more famous contemporaries.

Of the seven characters about whom I have written
in this book, four, I imagine, are quite unknown even
to those who are fairly familiar with the eighteenth
century. They turned up when I was looking for other
things. Richard Burridge, for instance, I first came
across when I was reading through Mist Weekly Journal;

-v-