Owen Aubrey Sherrard

2010 Lord Chatham: A War Minister in the Making, by O. A. Sherrard (read 8 June 1986) This is the first volume of a three-volume biography. Pitt was born Nov 16, 1708. The book is written with the confident assurance the reader is well-versed in 18th century history, and has a very English style. So it is not real easy to read. This volume ends in 1756--Pitt has just opposed the King's subsidy treaties with Russia and Hesse and has lost his minor office. The volume ends: "He was no longer a frustrated politician striving for mastery, but the great War Minister standing at the threshold of his fame and knocking thunderously for admittance." The Seven Years' War is about to start.… (mehr)

2011 Lord Chatham: Pitt and the Seven Years' War, by O. A. Sherrard (read 16 June 1986) This volume covers the period from Nov. 1755, when Pitt was dismissed from his post as Paymaster, to October 1761, when he resigned as Secretary of State. Pitt was obviously able, but he was a terror to work with. This book is very favorable to him and very derogatory to everybody else he dealt with in England. It is a good book, dealing with the exciting days of the Seven Years' War. The book looks at those momentous years--1755 to 1761--from an English view, though one cannot help but be struck at how momentous it was for all subsequent history that Pitt chose to win America on the battlefields of Germany. I used to, in my youth, be for France in the Seven Years War, but in reading this book I could not help but be for Pitt, and so of course also for Frederick the Great! It really is a switch for me to be for Frederick the Great! This has been a good book--better than Volume I.… (mehr)