Friends Until the End: Edmund Burke and Charles Fox in the Age of Revolution

The tensions of a dawning democratic era are dissected in this incisive dual biography of two celebrated 18th-century British statesmen. Journalist Grant (Bagehot) recaps the careers of Burke, a sober, middle-class political writer known for his scathing oratory, and Fox, a charming, dissolute aristocrat who ran up gambling debts and married a prostitute. The two became fast friends while championing progressive causes—they both sympathized with the American Revolution and condemned slavery—but fell out over the French Revolution. Fox embraced it as the apotheosis of liberty, but Burke was appalled by the overthrow of the monarchy, Catholic Church, and aristocracy. Burke argued that these hierarchical institutions were a vital, organic part of society and predicted that the revolutionary doctrines of rationalism, equality, and universal rights would lead France into bloody despotism. Burke’s abhorrence of “tyrannical democracy” can sound obsolete today, but Grant argues cogently that his writings yielded penetrating insights into the new political world. (“A war of ideology financed by paper money and sustained by mass conscription—[Burke] had anticipated not only the French Revolution but also the modern age itself.”) Grant paints a colorful portrait of an erudite Parliament wrestling with grand questions amid corruption, war, the occasional duel, and some of history’s wittiest repartee. It’s an entertaining and perceptive account of a watershed in the West’s political development. (Aug.)