SOURCE: West III, James L. W. “Biography and Literary Estates.” Sewanee Review 103, no. 1 (winter 1995): 20-1.

In the following review of Keepers of the Flame, West comments that Hamilton's approach is readable and balanced, but observes that the book as a whole lacks a clearly articulated theme.

Keepers of the Flame, Ian Hamilton's book about literary heirs, executors, and estates, traces the histories of the surviving manuscripts and literary rights of some twenty-two authors, all of them either British or expatriated Americans. There is conflict, some of it operatic, in nearly every one of these stories as the spouses, children, amanuenses, acolytes, and eventually the attorneys try to sort out who controls what. At stake are not just the author's unpublished writings, valuable as they often are, but the biographical account that will go down to posterity. Which of several possible versions will it be? Who gets to say...