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{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan: His Life and Character
|author=Andrew Crowther
|reviewer=John Van der Kiste
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=272
|publisher=The History Press
|date=April 2011
|isbn=978-0752455891
|website=|videocover=0752455893|amazonukaznuk=<amazonuk>0752455893</amazonuk>|amazonusaznus=<amazonus>0752455893</amazonus>
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Gilbert cannot have been an easy man to work with. He comes across as that of a man who could be very amiable, unfailingly generous in the right company, but hot-tempered and even abusive if he felt he was being wronged, a hard taskmaster when putting his cast through their paces during rehearsals. A humorist of the next generation, the youthful [[:Category:P G Wodehouse|P.G. Wodehouse]], noted after one encounter with the elder man in his later years that ''even when in repose his face was inclined to be formidable and his eye not the sort of eye you would willingly catch.'' He was evidently a good friend and valuable ally – but woe betide anyone who got on the wrong side of him - as well as a devoted husband. It was evidently a source of sadness to him and his wife Lucy that they never had children.
This book tells us much about his very varied and successful career as a journalist and playwright, and it seems that he applied his gifts to everything except novels and non-fiction. Yet it is his work on the Savoy Operas for which many people will be seeking out this book. Several times the partnership (with not only Sullivan, but also Richard D'Oyly Carte, the theatre impresario who was in effect their employer) came close to foundering, such as after the only moderately successful 'Princess Ida' in 1885 when the newly-knighted Sullivan declared he had ''come to the end of my capability in that class of piece''and did not wish to work with Gilbert any more. Thankfully he was persuaded otherwise – and the immediate result was 'The Mikado', their most popular work ever. Yet the fractious triumvirate of Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte was bitterly divided over a quarrel in 1890 when Gilbert took grave exception to being charged for the expense of front-of-house carpets being replaced at the Savoy Theatre. At length they worked together again, but their last two operettas were less successful. After the premiere of their final one, 'The Grand Duke' in 1896, Gilbert declared he was not ''a proud mother, & I never want to see the ugly misshapen little brat again!''
Although he was fighting ill-health by this time, with several of his younger contemporaries predeceasing him by several years (Sullivan and Carte both dying in their late fifties during a six-month period), Gilbert reached a contented old age at his house in Harrow, eventually receiving his knighthood – in his words, ''a tin-pot, twopenny-halfpenny sort of distinction'' - and writing to the last. There were no new operettas, but the last years of his life were a golden sunset during which he never completely retired from writing.
For another title on the late Victorian world, may we recommend [[Close to Holmes: A Look at the Connections Between Historical London, Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Alistair Duncan]].
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