SOURCE: "Cuckholded by Nelson," in Economist, Vol. 324, No. 7772, August 15, 1992, p. 77.

In the review below, the critic argues that, in The Volcano Lover, Sontag "employs the techniques of an essayist and a social historian better than those of a story-teller in her version of the lives of William Hamilton, his wives Catherine and Emma, and Lord Nelson."

Set mostly in Naples in the last 30 years of the 18th century, Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover follows the career of the British ambassador to the court of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. At the beginning of the narrative, this figure, dubbed "Il Cavaliere" by "polite Naples", is already well known for his passion for collecting: paintings, books, scientific instruments and, from his earlier days in Naples, classical artefacts discovered by the continuing excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii.

More unusually, he also "collects" Vesuvius, the still active volcano that in AD...