FRIENDS UNTIL THE END

Two men in turbulent times.

Financial journalist Grant delves into the roiling politics of 18th-century England with his dual biography of statesmen Edmund Burke (1729-97) and Charles James Fox (1749-1806). Burke, the son of an Irish lawyer, and Fox, heir to a rich English political family, were friends for several decades. Both were Whigs in the House of Commons; both ardently supported the American Revolution and the impeachment of a governor general of the East India Company on charges of mismanagement. But their sharply differing views on the French Revolution shattered their friendship. Fox, a Francophile, saw the revolution as glorious; Burke denounced it. Outspoken, personally charming, fearless in asserting their views, they emerged from vastly different backgrounds. Fox, precocious and coddled, entered Eton when he was 9 and matriculated at Oxford at 15. Leaving in 1766 after two years, he embarked on a two-year grand tour. In Europe, when he won election to Parliament, he blithely continued his travels. On a family vacation to Paris when he was a teenager, he developed an attraction to gambling, which became a lifelong compulsion. He lived, Grant notes, from bankruptcy to bankruptcy. After graduating from Trinity College, in 1750, Burke arrived in London to study law. At the age of 28, just before his first book was published, he married. He was a founding member of Samuel Johnson’s Literary Club, along with Sir Joshua Reynolds and Oliver Goldsmith. A reputed womanizer, Fox, at age 46, secretly married the prostitute with whom he had been living. Grant depicts the political rivalries and debates to which both men responded: Burke in writings that lay the groundwork of modern conservatism; Fox with ideals that inspired generations of 19th-century politicians.

A lively history informed by deep research.