Bought on a whim at a used bookstore in New Orleans, read in its entirety on the plane ride home, which comprised a lengthy layover in the Las Vegas airport with its soundtrack of slot machines trilling and jangling. Quite a contrast. But I remember really enjoying this. The style is (deliberately) overwrought, with Brendon half-aping Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians and half, I think, sincerely copying it. So these are cutting biographies of Edwardian figures. I have no idea as to their accuracy or the quality of Brendon's analysis, but they sure were fun to read.