Defenestration

But whatever the reasons for the wide dispersal of his energies, John Freeman was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable, successful and protean public servants of the 20th century.

We finished with a discussion of the books that we've been reading recently, and I'll kick us off.

So Richard and I recently travelled to Northern Ireland and spent some time there.

And during the trip, popped into Coleraine, where there is, to my knowledge, the only public bust of one Andrew Bonner Law, who was briefly Prime Minister in the early 1920s.

And although Purcell spends basically a decade writing this biography while John Freeman is still alive, what I think this biography obviously lacks is John Freeman to be able to clarify and explain more his motives and the psychology of some of the decisions that he made.

But Purcell, given the challenge that he faced does a very good job in trying to put the pieces together without falling into the temptation of overly psychologizing this man even though i think it is quite tempting to draw some conclusions about his psychology so that's a very private celebrity by hugh purcell

We'll have links to those books in our show notes, but that's all for this episode of Since Attlee and Churchill.

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