ABSTRACT
“In Retrospect” draws up a balance sheet on Bottomley’s life. Bottomley’s politics, the book argues, are in retrospect recognisably those of the 1920s. He was no fascist, he lacked the youth and determination of a Mussolini or a Hitler – but he was part of the same right, following along the same lines as them. The chapter rejects the idea that Bottomley was a self-made man brought low by his vices: the latter were essential to Bottomley’s act. Without his drinking, his extravagant spending, he would never have built the audience of followers who Bottomley relied on to make him seem larger than he was. Bottomley was unlucky, the book concludes, when so many of his close friends died unpunished, seen as the pillars of the British establishment.
