A. L. Rowse on Arthur Bryant

“Mr. Bryant has a wonderful tale to tell, he sees the whole picture and has the gift to make us see it.”

“For all his aristocratic taste, he had popular sympathies. He liked prize-fighters, old-fashioned trade unionists, and of course Army and Navy men, among whom he had a devoted following. He was miles away from Bloomsbury intellectuals, at the opposite pole to Lytton Strachey in several respects.”

“He was the most popular historian of his time — and above all an emotional, even a sentimental, one... He was always alive and had a good sense of humour, a wonderful feeling for landscape and country life... His best qualities were his passion for the English past, and his gift for giving expression to it, calling back above all its life.”

“So how much of all his work remains? There was a good deal of honest research. His large work on Samuel Pepys certainly stands. His Regency trilogy offers an authentic picture of the age, both vigorous and sympathetic. But I best liked his essays, collected in such books as Historian's Holiday. He was a born writer, as few are, and he dedicted perhaps obsessively. His thinking was emotional, and that was of a piece with his gifts.”