An intemperate zone

Two years before the outbreak of the first world war, a Royal Navy officer, addressing an Admiralty enquiry into the disturbing question of lower-deck commissions, ventured the cautionary opinion that it took three generations to make a gentleman. It is hard to know exactly what he meant by that endlessly morphing concept, but if it bore any resemblance to the historical compound of avarice, bad faith, dynastic ambition and family selfishness that dominates the pages of Adam Nicolson’s dazzling narrative, then the one consoling mercy is that it has always taken a good deal less than three to unmake one.

There are gleams of humanity, courage and honour to be found in almost every chapter here — the extraordinary Eliza Pinckney, the melancholy Harry Oxinden, even poor Joan Thynne, so old (40) and so fat, as her loving daughter-in-law told her, that all she was good for was to manure her grubby little dower house — but on the other hand, take the case of Sir William Plumpton.