Reviews for Thirty Years of Foreign Policy, a History of the Secretaryships of the Earl of Aberdeen and ...

The average rating for Thirty Years of Foreign Policy, a History of the Secretaryships of the Earl of Aberdeen and ... based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-11-16 00:00:00 Susan Fults I find this book fascinating. Clarendon held political office at the very highest level and he candidly wrote what he thought about the details of his experience. His prose style is extraordinary. I find I can start the book anywhere and become engrossed in his story. What amazes me about this book is that is chronicles the destruction of a world view. Clarendon came from a time and a class that believed in the King as ruler: he who had the right and the authority to dispose of the country as he saw fit and Clarendon watched the overthrow of that idea. He chronicles the specifics of how that way of organizing England was destroyed by the deliberate actions of Parliament. He's a good enough writer to cast the image of those events into your mind. You can feel his shock and his horror. The development of representative democracy at a national level (as opposed to a city state) took about a century to take form but this book chronicles its birth pangs.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-18 00:00:00 Betty Aberlin Covers the English Civil war and does a reasonable job. Can at times get boring but overall this is a good book,