Now mostly worth reading as an example of the kinds of things which could be published as historical writing in the mid 1950s in the UK without anyone batting an eyelid—though the blatant and unapologetic misogyny certainly made both my eyebrows rush towards my hairline. For example, this:

But she [Barbara, Lady Castlemaine] never put herself out to make the King [Charles II] easy; indeed, after she found out that ease was what he valued most, she made him purchase it at a constantly heightened price: scenes, propitiation, gifts, demands, scenes, forgiveness, grants and titles followed in the regular order of the dance she led him. What a fool he was! — she should have been beaten.

or this:

Instead of that the intolerable woman [Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough] —perhaps the only extenuation of her conduct may be her change of life, and an element of hysteria—when on tormenting the Queen [Anne] about Mrs Masham.

Oh, those perfidious females, with their dangerous tendencies not to spend their lives putting men at ease, with their hormones—why can't a woman be more like a man? Oh, that's right. Their brains aren't the proper shape. ( )