Wholesale Friends Until the End

Friends Until the End by James Grant In eighteenth-century Britain, Edmund Burke and Charles Fox made common political cause for twenty-five years. They supported the rebellious American colonies, attacked the British slave trade, defended religious liberty, and attempted to shield Britain’s public credit from the crisis-prone East India Company. The two men did not share social position, a way of life, a political legacy, or even a generation—but improbably, they were friends. The hard-drinking, mistress-collecting Fox loved and admired Burke, feelings that the clean-living political philosopher and statesman warmly reciprocated. Friends Until the End tells the story of two men who hailed from different worlds, yet thrived together in the London intellectual sphere.