Customer Reviews

Umbrella: A Pacific Tale

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A fictionalized biography of Lord Aberdeen, who was Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time of the Crimean War. The Crimean War was the Iraq of the mid-nineteenth century. Lord Aberdeen got Britain into it, then bungled it and got fired in the middle of it. That's the usual version of events. The author thinks Aberdeen got a rough deal.
It might be of interest to those who are already interested in British history of the first half of the nineteenth century. Mount seems to assume that the reader does already know a lot about it. He drags in a lot of celebrities as peripheral characters, which is ok if you've heard of the celebrities. For example he introduces a character who turns out to be Lord Palmerston, which might be intriguing if you know who Palmerston was.
One of the best parts is an appendix where he explains the history. There's a lot of historical parallels to be explored, and maybe a straightforward biography would have made a better book.