SOURCE: Massie, Allan. “Foreigners.” Spectator 249, no. 8048 (9 October 1982): 28-9.

In the following review, Massie describes Group Portrait as interesting, perceptive, and well-crafted.

‘Some years ago my friend H. G. Wells wrote to the papers to say that for many years he was conscious of a ring of foreign conspirators plotting against British letters at no great distance from his residence, Spade House, Sandgate’. (Ford Madox Ford: Return to Yesterday.) These words lie at the heart of Mr Delbanco's book, [Group Portrait,] though, curiously, he doesn't quote them. Three of the foreign conspirators were Henry James, Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane. Ford tried to pretend that a fourth was W. H. Hudson, but it's more likely that Wells had Ford himself in mind—it was in his Hueffer days before his change of surname disguised his German antecedents.

And of course Wells was quite right, up to a point. James...