Who Was Edmund Burke? (Besides Statesman, Author And Orator)

“Everyone claims Edmund Burke as his patron saint, political forefather, lodestar and compass point, ancestral bulwark against the tide of whatever seething modern ill he despises. … But Edmund Burke the actual man is faded away – the man his wife called Ned, fond of vulgar puns and lewd jokes, an ample man, thin as a lad and then never again; the chatterbox ‘never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off,’ as Samuel Johnson said.”