THE BOOK OF TALBOTViolet CliftonHarcourt, Brace ($3.50).
Excited book-boomers have compared this unusual biography to James Boswell's Life of Johnson, to Herman Melvill's Moby Dick, to Charles Montagu Doughty's Arabia Deserta. The Book of Talbot is a biography of a comparatively unknown man written by his widow. Gravely, not to say solemnly told, it is sometimes pompous but never inane. Authoress Clifton's fierce reverence for her subject does at times succeed in making her manner grand.
Like many an Englishman since the days of Drake, Talbot Clifton (1868-1928), found England too small, too safe. Scion of an ancient line (beginning in 1060), and...