JRM wrote a book, "The Victorians - Twelve Titans Who Forged Britain".I've not read it, but I hugely enjoyed the critics' reaction, eg:The historian AN Wilson, whose book The Victorians was published in 2002, wrote in the Times that Rees-Mogg’s effort was “anathema to anyone with an ounce of historical, or simply common, sense”. Describing the work as “a dozen clumsily written pompous schoolboy compositions”, he said it claimed to be a work of history, but was in fact “yet another bit of self-promotion by a highly motivated modern politician”.On the chapter about Gen Charles Napier’s conquest of Sindh, Wilson wrote: “At this point in the book you start to think that the author is worse than a twit. By all means let us celebrate what was great about the Victorians, but there is something morally repellent about a book that can gloss over massacres and pillage on the scale perpetrated by Napier.”Writing in The Guardian, Kathryn Hughes described the book as “an origin myth for Rees-Mogg’s particular rightwing vision of Britain”. “In parliament, Rees-Mogg is often referred to as ‘the honourable member for the 18th century’, a nod to those funny clothes he wears, along with pretending not to know the name of any modern pop songs,” she wrote.“What a shame, then, that he has not absorbed any of the intellectual and creative elegance that flourished during that period.”And on purely literary grounds, she added: "At least we know The Victorians isn't ghost written, since no self-respecting freelancer would dare ask for payment for such rotten prose".Dominic Sandbrook described the book as abysmal and soul-destroying. Writing in the Sunday Times, he said: “No doubt every sanctimonious academic in the country has already decided that Rees-Mogg’s book has to be dreadful, so it would have been fun to disappoint them.“But there is just no denying it: the book is terrible, so bad, so boring, so mind-bogglingly banal that if it had been written by anybody else it would never have been published.”While in The Independent, Adam Forrest asked: ‘Did Rees-Mogg really write this? Or did he get the work-experience boy to do it?’
Richard Cathcart ● 1425d