Christopher Hibbert, (1924 - 2008,) was an Englishman, educated at Oxford, decorated in the Second World War, who sold real estate when he came home, and only took up writing professionally in his thirties. We had a book come across the Used Books Desk today, published in 1987, by Methuen, extensively and tastefully illustrated, handsomely made, titled simply The Grand Tour. In it Hibbert tells the story of the "finishing" a certain class of Englishman came to be expected to get from travel on The Continent. It is a charming book.
Hibbert wrote charming books on Queen Victoria, Samuel Johnson, Wellington. He wrote exciting and vivid history about the Gordan Riots, Waterloo, the English Civil War, the Medici, and thoughtful books on evil, scandal, Girabaldi, and yes, Charles Dickens. Hibbert wrote enormously, across five decades, various historical periods, multiple biographical subjects, but he always wrote well; in careful, clear English prose, with great curiosity, undaunted enthusiasm, and no agenda beyond communicating his own pleasure in the subjects he undertook. If he was not a "great historian," I don't know that he ever intended to be, or would have written with that reputation in mind. And yet, as a popular historian, before that term fell to disuse and abuse, he was great. As an individual writing well about history, he begins to look greater as his kind become ever increasingly rare. Oh, there are specialists in everything from Lincoln to the production and migration of wheat, who may write as well or better, but as a writer whose subject was simply history, not the theory of, the correction of, or the minute detail of history, he was among the last of his kind, and all the more to be admired for doing what he did so well and for so long. (His first book was published in 1958, his last in 2004.) Fournier said, "Great individuals are not only popular themselves, but they give popularity to whatever they touch." By that standard, Hibbert was great.
It seems worthwhile, to reproduce here a list of his books. It would be well worth the reader's time to find them, as curiosity leads:
King Mob (Longmans, 1958)
Wolfe at Quebec (Longmans, 1959)
The Destruction of Lord Raglan (Longmans, 1961)
Benito Mussolini (Longmans, 1962)
The Roots of Evil: A Social History of Crime and Punishment (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963)
Agincourt (Batsford, 1964)
The Court at Windsor (Longmans, 1964)
Garibaldi and his enemies (Longmans, 1965)
The Making of Charles Dickens (Harper & Row, 1967)
Waterloo(New English library Ltd, 1967)
Charles I (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968)
The Search for King Arthur (American Heritage, 1969)
The Dragon Wakes (Harper & Row, 1970)
The personal history of Samuel Johnson (Longmans, 1971)
George IV (Vol 1 Longman, 1972, Vol 2 Allen Lane
The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall (Morrow, 1975)
Edward VII: A Portrait (Allen Lane, 1976)
The Great Mutiny: India, 1857 (Allen Lane, 1978)
The Days of the French Revolution (Allen Lane, 1980)
The London Encyclopedia with Ben Weinreb (Macmillan, 1983)
Rome, the Biography of a City (Norton, 1985)
The English: A Social History (Grafton, 1987)
Encyclopedia of Oxford (Macmillan, 1988)
Redcoats and Rebels (Grafton, 1990)
The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age (Addison-Wesley, 1991)
Florence: Biography of a City (Norton, 1993)
Cavaliers & Roundheads: The English Civil War, 1642-1649 (HarperCollins, 1993)
Wellington: A Personal History (Da Capo, 1997)
George III: A Personal History (1998)
The Marlboroughs (Viking, 2001)
Queen Victoria: a personal history (HarperCollins, 2001)
Napoleon: His wives and women (HarperCollins, 2002)
Disraeli: a personal history (HarperCollins, 2004)
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