Katherine Christian

WHEN Hugh Walpole died in 1941, he left unfinished this sixth novel in the Herries series. In this sizable fragment which seems to lack nothing but the end, Walpole carries the Herries family from the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 through the reigns of James I and Charles I to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. In this war the Herries family finds itself — like England — divided brother against brother, Cromwell man against King’s man. Into the lives of the Herries family comes the heroine, Katherine Christian, a fairly conventional passionate adventurer, infinitely desirable and infinitely unattainable. As a document which helps to complete the Herries cycle, this book is important. But as a novel in and of itself it is disappointing, for the death of its author robbed it of a climax, a solution to the conflict.