[George Malcolm Young, historian] Three Autograph Letters Signed to Mark [Bonham-Carter].

English historian (1882-1959). All three items, two pages, quarto. All good, though grubby and lightly creased. Three intimate and revealing letters. ITEM ONE apparently sent to Bonham-Carter in America. 'You will soon be back, I think. Are you now occupied in assembling and correlating your observations? [.] I should guess it was quite impossible to think when a Presidential election is going on. | I have been spending a fortnight in Oxford and I asked some of the early-middle-aged dons what the undergraduates were thinking. I rather gathered that the tone is soberly stoical - the smash is coming and there is nothing to be said. Or done. Utopianism, or Reformism, or anything that requires enthusiasm, is not to be found.' Discusses the Mount Pelerin Society and von Hayek. 'Are you all keyed up about Berlin? When I read that the Russians had arrested two Germans for letting cinders fall on the sleepers, [.] I felt at home. That is Russia through and through. [.] But Stalin is aged: Molotov is not built on that scale. Will there be a struggle for succession? Is that why Tito has shown his independence? But it is all staring into impenetrable fog.' ITEM TWO enclosed a copy (no longer present) of 'my contribution to The Character of England, in which your mother also figures, I believe [.] The printer has made some queer mistakes [.] I have now said all I have to say about Modern History and I return gladly to the Dark Ages where [.] you can make up your history as you go.' Asks if he knows 'Hicks of Nuffield', whose book he discusses. 'Is the Closed Shop going to be the modern Ship Money?' Discusses American history. 'I once debated with [Harold] Laski "Who was the worst man in English history?" He said Wilberforce: I said Pym. We compromised on Thomas Cromwell. The runner up might be Wedderburn.' ITEM THREE. 'Here is Burke - [.] I rather think I have his Bolingbroke influences in the attempt to get a symmetrical Contrast: I have a geometrical mind and like to make my angles match. | Do you know anything of Professor Bust who writes in the Nineteenth Century'. 'But in the crash of Empires and institutions one can hardly hear oneself think. And it is no great comfort to say that I foresaw it all and said so in my Government of Britain 1940 [.] it had a curiously sharp vogue in France when the Frogs were trying to make a Constitution.'. …