“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.”