Dark and Light: The Guinness Story Book

If there is a problem with Wilson's study of the entire Guinness family from its Irish brewing roots through to the endless proliferation of branches in the present day, it is almost his brevity- -there are times when it is a bumpy ride. He has taken on, as part of his subject, the rise of a particular sort of drinking, the shift of brewery money into banking and the process whereby the merely rich become the socially grand. In passing, he has to deal, for example, with Victorian philanthropy, thirties patterns of adultery, sixties drug abuse and the internal politics of the nascent state of Israel. Politicians, Royals and poets flit across his behaviour, along with the IRA, the Nazis and the Fraud Squad; most people would consider it hard work simply to keep track of a cousinage this vast and interconnected, but he has to take on all of the social milieux in which they were players. If the result is highly readable, it is because he has remembered at all times to follow the money; this is an intelligent book which reminds us that love may be what holds vast families together, but money is always in there somewhere. -- Ros KaveneyRead More