Customer Reviews

William Walton: Behind the Facade (Oxford paperbacks)

5 star:		(0)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

There's WAY too much about Lady Walton and not enough about the man himself. The title should have been _The Waltons As Remembered by Lady Susan_. The book is fairly helpless: coherency is often lacking (many excursuses into the areas of no interest whatsoever and w/o observable relation to the declared topic); there are some proofreading errors (principle/principal sort of thing; one doesn't expect this sort of thing in a commercially published book); the author doesn't come across as very intellectual becaue of some annoying (and strong) opinions, and also because of apparently being overawed by the English aristocratic principle: every inconsequential JimBob is immediately footnoted as "fifth baronet of Oombagoombashire, first earl of" this and that, etc.... I don't even know (nor care to know) what that means! Fifth baronet where? In the line to the bathroom? Who cares what baronet who is. It didn't look to me that Sir William married his intellectual equal. Of course there's still a lot about Walton, so I'm not saying the book is useless: it is marginally curious, although your patience will be tried at times by all these lengthy deviations into the Gils family history no one cares about. Not enough about pre-marriage Walton (unsurprisingly). All very "proper". Some nice pictures though.

The bottomline: worth a quick read (it's easy to read, can be done in one sitting), but ultimately unsatisfying. An objective study by a musically and literarily competent (and unrelated to Walton) person would be better. Three stars.