PositiveForeign AffairsIn James Grant, it sometimes seems, the nineteenth century has been resuscitated. Towering, gaunt, bow-tied, and pinstriped, he writes with a sly wit that recalls the novels of William Thackeray ... Now, Grant has written a delightful biography of Walter Bagehot, the great nineteenth-century Englishman in whom Grant perhaps recognizes a grander version of himself: the would-be Victorian sage is paying tribute to the authentic one ... Grant has written a gem of a book: entertaining, wry, and gloriously eccentric. Readers learn that the mud in London was 57 parts horse dung and that Bagehot played \'zestful games of cup-and-ball\' wearing—yes—a monocle. Along the way, they get a nasty feeling that even the greatest liberals have feet of clay and that the Victorian version of the radical center enjoyed a deference that is inconceivable today.
