“Another damned thick book! Scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr Gibbon? Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, 1781, demonstrating the Royal family’s longstanding devotion to scholarship. The Duke had just received the second or third volume of Gibbon’s The History of The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire. Gibbon himself sent the books. “Ugly, Affected, Disgusting” is how James Boswell described Gibbon. Are the British Royals still dim?
© 2024 John Oliver
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