Book Review

Sheila (30-B-2) FPE

Please excuse my non-appearance recently; it

was due to press of other activities and also to a dearth of books worth reviewing. To make up, here

are my views on FOUR books:

THE ENIGMA OF THE AGE, by Cynthia Cox, Longmans, Green & Go., London. 149 pp. including bibliography and index, 25 shillings ($3.50 equivalent), 1966. (Subtitle: The strange story of the Chevalier d'Eon.)

This is one of those unfortunate coincidences that authors are subject to, in that Miss Cox was probably totally unaware that an almost identical book was being done by another Englishwoman. (ROYAL SPY, by Edna Nixon, reviewed in TVia #36, under the misprinted title ROYAL SET.) Both ladies are compe- tent historians, and both have done such a creditable job that it is impossible to say that either is in- ferior. On the other hand, hardly anyone will want to own both versions. Miss Cox's shorter version has proved more readable to Sylvia FE-B-3-FPE, who kindly contributed the review copy; while I, already saturated with Mrs. Nixon's facts, found it less so. Certainly Miss Cox makes far less effort to under- stand the nature of d'Eon, dismissing his cross- dressing as something for which he had "solid reasons" as opposed to the "sexual abnormality (also known... as deonism)"'! However, Mrs. Nixon's efforts led her to include a chapter quoting at length from "experts" who were more poorly informed than she was herself. Miss Cox goes into more detail on his work as a spy in Russia, and brings out that cross-dressing at court balls there was common. On the whole, your choice of these two books should depend mainly on where you live; each is a bargain, but not both if you see what I mean. There is no indication of a

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