I am obliged to Johnathan Pearce at Samizdata for reference to this (a .pdf file), which is a brief biography, extracted from a larger one, of Lord Salisbury, who said:
“By a free country, I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like.”
I have a lot of time for Lord Salisbury. I have visited his old house, where he apparently installed an internal telephone system of his own invention which was responsible for a number of incidents of a more or less country-house-farcical nature. Also, from a certain angle I look remarkably like him.
Had I unlimited funds I might just buy a copy of
…Andrew Roberts’ book, Salisbury — Victorian Titan, which was published in September 1999 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London (£25 hardback)
Of course in order to do so I should probably have to forgo yet another biography of Brunel.
