Featured Book - "John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand"

Richard Reeves
John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand
Atlantic, 2007, 192 REE

Journalist, author and RSA Fellow Richard Reeves' latest book is a rehabilitating biography of Britain's "greatest liberal," John Stuart Mill. Against Gladstone’s enduring characterisation of Mill as the patron saint of rationalism, Reeves highlights the controversy of he inspired as a prominent public intellectual of his day.

But if Mill wasn’t a dower intellectual, that’s not because his thought lacks merit. As Reeves argued in The Guardian recently, liberal democracy has become the standard form of Government and public ethics, yet there has been little use of past liberal philosophies to think about what this means for societies and their citizens.

Reeves’ work reviving John Stuart Mill as a philosopher worth engaging with is an important opening remark in this vital conversation.

To read more about Reeves' views on Mill, see his portait for Prospect magazine, and for more on Victorian Firebrand, see The Spectator's review.

To borrow a copy of John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, please contact the RSA Library.