From Burke to Thatcher, a long line of great Britons here

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Originally published 10:46 p.m., September 4, 2004, updated 12:00 a.m., September 5, 2004

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GREAT CONSERVATIVES

By Martin O. Hutchinson

Academica Press, $39.95, 772 pages

REVIEWED BY MARTIN SIEFF

The great British conservative tradition is embraced and treasured across the political spectrum of the mainstream American right, "paleocons" and "neocons" alike. However, even those who believe they have all the answers from Edmund Burke or Paul Johnson, and who adore Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, should find Martin Hutchinson's ambitious neo-tome an education and revelation.

Mr. Hutchinson, a former London international merchant banker turned economic and business columnist for United Press International, here attempts the audacious and immensely ambitious effort of redefining conservatism or, in his use of the terminology, recovering it from the many, often conflicting interpretations that have been placed upon it.

He is rigorous and consistent in his definitions and analysis, and he is also a fearless, equal-opportunities controversialist. Libertarians who rejoice in his celebration of the achievements of minimal-government, low-taxation British leaders like William Pitt the Younger, Lord Liverpool and Lord Salisbury will likely be appalled at his equally easy approval of Britain's acquisition and maintenance of a world-spanning empire.

Neoconservatives will happily embrace both his domestic free-market and international imperial sympathies, but are sure to be stopped in their tracks by his fierce critique of Churchill, in his view a big-government interventionist who sold the pass on domestic economic affairs and big-government manipulation of society. (He is far more enthusiastic about Margaret Thatcher.)

The author dares to place the famous 18th- and early 19th-century prime ministers Pitt the Younger and Lord Liverpool, both of whom governed Britain longer and more continuously than any prime minister in the nearly two centuries since, as figures of far more importance even than the beloved Burke.

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