Reviews for History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The average rating for History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-13 00:00:00 Tony Starks It can be difficult to be satisfied with a biography. From this, I wanted more about his time in Japan and much more about Mishima. If I couldn't get that, then I'd probably have gone for a literary biography. You see, Drabble reveals that Angus Wilson spent a great deal of time worrying about money and doing things he didn't really want to do because he got paid to do them. It wasn't very thrilling for him and, I'm afraid, it's not very interesting to read about. I thought Margaret Drabble could have brought things alive with a bit of gossip and tittle-tattle, but she must have decided that she wanted to keep it straight and attributable. ...660 pages ... I should have just used the index .... "one evening when alone with him upon the brown velvet sofa she suddenly threw herself upon the hearthrug, passionately solicited his advances, and, to render her offer irresistible, extracted from her person a bloody tampon which she flung into the fire with the cry 'I'm not too old, you see! There's life in the old dog yet!'" "one of the minor incidental pleasures of the war was the exposure of bombed lavatory walls to the enquiring female eye." "Angus felt himself ill-placed at table and stormed away, thereby offending Dr Ivan Morris, his Japanese wife Ayako Morris and Jintaro Kataoka, a former host in Japan." Tony, Angus's partner, on Mishima's 1965 visit to Suffolk: "To me in the morning, wanted us to go to bed together, but would make no move because it might be insult to A(ngus)." 1969 Trip to Tokyo: "Angus caused offense ... by expecting the seventy-year-old Nobel prize-winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata to wait on him in his hotel."

Review # 2 was written on 2010-12-25 00:00:00 Lisa Shouse Amazingly thorough exploration of one of the most enigmatic literary characters ever. I would have given it 5 stars except for a few unfortunate typos and the puzzling technique that Drabble exhibited throughout of seemingly randomly referring to herself in either first or third person, often both within the same sentence.