Preface
It was rather presumptuous of author and colleague Thomas Grant to approach a complete stranger with a request for a review of his second book. (His first was a biography of celebrated advocate Jeremy Hutchinson.) But I am glad he did. This is a really excellent book – wise, perceptive and compassionate. The more I read it, the more I wanted to write, so that the resulting essay came out at nearly 6,000 words. Edward Lucas, who had by now taken over the editorship of Standpoint, was less indulgent than his predecessor Daniel Johnson, and cut it fairly radically. Predictably, I think the original is better; it certainly contains more original material culled from the book, which provides the article with most of any merit that it possesses. So this is the version reproduced here.