Volume 55, Number 10 · June 12, 2008
Mad About the Boy
By Jasper Griffin
Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend
A choice few characters in history have earned, or at least have acquired and retained, the title of 'The Great.' Peter the Great, of Russia; Charles the Great, who is Charlemagne, Emperor of the West; Louis le Grand, fourteenth of that name, King of France: we are familiar, more or less ironically, with them all. An attempt was made by Romantic Victorian writers to call Alfred, king in Britain in the ninth century, by that gratifying title, but the general verdict of the British has been an embarrassed mutter of 'Oh, chuck it!'
Review, 2091 words
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