The Edwardian era was not such a golden summer

This is a rather odd book and, I regret to say (given the reading that seems to have gone into it), not a very good one. If one had little knowledge of the reign of King Edward VII, or of the jokes, anecdotes and scandals of that period, then it might serve as a useful introduction to it. To anyone familiar with the history of the opening years of the past century, however, there is little to learn from a book dependent entirely on secondary sources, old newspapers and copies of Tatler. Martin Williams is clearly fascinated by the Belle Époque and has read much about it; but in avoiding archives and serious research, he has produced nothing that other scholars of the period did not already know, which gives his otherwise articulate book a stale flavour.

From its subtitle, I had expected a thoughtful examination of the social conventions of Edwardian Britain and its attitudes to monarchy and death before the Great War.