In this book Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell, looking at the Netherlands through his own eyes rather than through those of his many predecessors, has produced a pic­ture of the country which may appear un­orthodox only because of its unfamiliarity. In his belief Holland, as a country, is as individual as Russia or as Spain, and there is a great deal more to be seen and enjoyed in it than the picture galleries, windmills, canals, flower markets and bare empty churches which seem to have impressed previous writers.It has been Mr. Sitwell's endeavour to get out of the museums and into the open-air-out of the museums and, likewise, away from the great cities (although not without having entered some of the old and forgotten patrician houses of The Hague and Amsterdam).

In this way the author has discovered a new and beautiful Holland in which the architecture of the eighteenth century, the strange villages and costumes of Friesland, or the art of a Daniel Marot and a Cornelis Troost are taken as truly representative of this at once phlegmatic and poetical people and the man-made wonders of their largely artificial country. The result is a book both to awaken curiosity and, so far as a book may do so, to satisfy it-more especially as the very numerous photographs go side by side with the text and illustrate it at almost every point.If the traditionally pic­turesque and quaint appear as seldom among these illustrations as they do in the text the intelligent reader is presented all the more with a picture of a country whose proximity and unfamiliarity will form added inducements to a visit.

Hilaire Belloc (1870- 1953) was born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, and raised in England. Educated in Birmingham before voluntarily serving his military term of service in France, Belloc then returned to England to study History at Baliol College, Oxford where he graduated with a First class degree.

Writing on everything from poetry to war and travel in between, Belloc has been called one of the Big Four of Edwardian Letters, along with H.G.Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and G. K. Chesterton, all of whom debated each other into the 1930s. Belloc was closely associated with Chesterton, and Shaw coined the term Chesterbelloc for their partnership. A deeply religious Catholic, Belloc wrote considerably about his faith, and throughout his literary career he was concerned with the problems of social reform. He was a political activist and an MP for Salford from 1906 to 1910 for the Liberal party, and his written non-fiction work criticized both capitalism and aspects of socialism.