THE QUEEN’S KNIGHT: The Extraordinary Life of Queen Victoria’s Most Trusted Confidant by Martyn Downer

Bantam £25 pp452

Pity poor Sir Howard Elphinstone. In 1858, he was a Crimean war hero, looking forward to a distinguished career in the army. Then he was chosen to be governor of Victoria and Albert’s third son, Prince Arthur, and was plunged into 30 years of backbiting, scheming and rivalries at court. Gone was potential military glory and, instead, he was obliged to respond tactfully to the queen’s relentless, semi-hysterical correspondence about her son’s upbringing and to listen to the endless woes of out-of-favour courtiers. In the end, he was denied even a decently honourable death, suffering a ludicrous accident in which he was catapulted backwards into the Bay of Biscay from a ship taking him on holiday to Tenerife. Martyn Downer’s biography captures the man himself, stoically determined to do his duty to his monarch, and provides a compelling picture of Victorian court life.

THE LOST WORLD OF JAMES SMITHSON: Science, Revolution and the Birth of the Smithsonian by Heather Ewing

Bloomsbury £20 pp436

The illegitimate son of an English duke, James Smithson spent his life wandering Europe, conducting scientific experiments and corresponding with like-minded savants across the continent. When he died in Genoa in 1829, he was largely unknown and would have remained so had it not been for the instructions in his will. He left the bulk of his considerable fortune to found an institute of learning in the USA, a country he had never visited. His name lives on in the Smithsonian Institution. Heather Ewing set herself a difficult task in writing Smithson’s biography. His published works comprised just 27 short scientific papers, and his journals and letters mostly went up in smoke in a fire in 1865. Unsurprisingly, Smithson fails to emerge from her book as a memorable character, but she does succeed brilliantly in reconstructing the world of scientific endeavour in which he operated.

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