The companion volume to Bernard Crick"s "Essays on Politics and Literature", this book is a mixture of the critic"s academic and journalistic writing. He aims to rescue political philosophy from the clutches of academia and to stimulate popular political debate. Subjects covered in his ambit include the Northern Ireland problem, national identity, the Falklands War, spy mania and the Nazi hunters. Divided into "thoughts" (longer essays challenging and analyzing a received body of opinion) and "polemics" (shorter didactic episodes of British political life under Mrs Thatcher), this is political philosophy written for the man on the street.