Volume 34, Number 20 · December 17, 1987
Too Proud to Fight?
By David Cannadine
RAB: The Life of R.A. Butler
by Anthony Howard
Jonathan Cape, 422 pp., $26.95
It is a cliché of American history that the inscription on Thomas Jefferson's tomb at Monticello carries understatement almost to the point of self-indulgence. There is no mention of the great offices of state that he held: instead he is remembered as the author of the Declaration of Independence and as the architect of the University of Virginia. The same disdain for government may be seen in the words on the gravestone of R.A. Butler in Saffron Walden churchyard, which make no allusion to his long and illustrious ministerial career: all that is recorded is that he was the member of Parliament for the constituency for thirty-six years and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, for a further thirteen. There, however, the similarities end. Jefferson's indifference to worldly distinction was that of a man whose public career had been triumphantly successful; whereas with Butler, it coyly concealed the fact that he twice failed to become prime minister of England.
Review, 3735 words
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