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I have read "Eminent Victorians", but might I suggest that some of the people described there are best shown in "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and the "Flashman" novels? Novels always seem closer to history, somehow, and it's a shame that Fraser never worked the cardinal into his tapestry.

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I agree. Those two works are an interesting takes on Victorian life from two different eras and world views. Thomas Hughes's contemporary novel was hugely popular, even until the mid to late 20th Century, as an ideal for the moral development of boys. The Flashman Papers is a satire from the late 1960s onwards that uses Tom Brown's bully, Flashman, as a device to lampoon the British Empire. Personally, I find Fraser's Flashman brilliant, an antithetical depiction of the Victorian age that was traditionally populated with military heroes and intrepid explorers that were likely to be anything but moral.

Any Tom Brown fans may be interested in the little known (justifiably) sequel, which takes Tom to Oxford:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26851/26851-h/26851-h.htm

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