G. M. Young
George Malcolm Young CB (29 April 1882 – 18 November 1959) was an English historian, best known for his book on Victorian times in Britain, Portrait of an Age (1936).
His books include studies of Edward Gibbon (1932), Charles I and Oliver Cromwell (1935) and Stanley Baldwin (1952) and the published texts of his lectures on literary and political topics.
[2] In that capacity he accompanied Arthur Henderson, then a member of the war cabinet, on a visit to Russia in 1917, where Young met Francis Lindley, counsellor in the British embassy.
In a 1983 study, James A. Colaiaco writes that Young became prominent in London intellectual society and participated in "lively discussions at the Athenaeum" while "his judgment continued to mature and his literary skills were perfected".
It was well received; The Sphere found it "a clever piece of portraiture … admiring but critical";[6] The New York Times considered that although intended for popular consumption, it revealed why Gibbon's genius remained "as little out of date as the Parthenon".
[10] Though far from uncritical of the Victorian age, Young acknowledged himself as a product of it: "I was born when the Queen had still nearly nineteen years to reign: I saw her twice, Gladstone once: I well remember the death of Newman and Tennyson, and my earliest recollection of the Abbey brings back the flowers fresh on Browning's grave".
Writing for the general reader was an effort for Young who, Hart-Davis said, "always assumes that one is his intellectual equal and makes no concessions … This, though flattering, often carried matters well over my head until I knew him well enough to ask for explanations of all the allusions I couldn’t understand".
[2] When Mona Wilson grew too old and frail to remain at her house and retired to a nursing home, Young, who had been re-elected a Fellow in 1948, moved into rooms at All Souls.
His earlier books, Hart-Davis said, "came largely out of his head, where their subject-matter had been brewing up for many years", whereas this biography required a great deal of original research, which Young found tedious and frustrating, as Baldwin left few personal papers and did not keep a diary.
