By Ian Dunt (2020)
A real achievement. It’s ambitious – I started off thinking he’d bitten off a bit more than he could chew. It’s both very contemporary – up to the minute even – and a sweeping history of the liberal tradition.
Does a remarkable job considering this scope – even for well-known parts of the story or figures like John Stuart Mill, brings out wonderful details that (I at least) just wasn’t aware of – like he effectively co-wrote much of his work with his partner, then wife, Harriet Taylor, and was dedicated to the rights of women. Not to mention bringing in really interesting guys like Benjamin Constant, who I’d plain never heard of.
There’s some necessary compression to stop the book being 1000 pages long – but I think he pulls it off. E.g. the Russian revolution is covered in 4 pages (!), but manages to call out the best reference for the period (Orlando Figues). I flagged a bit in towards the end, not so much as a fault of the book itself but in how depressing the material became as the story neared the present day. But it ties up extremely well, and is remarkably up-to-the-minute.