Edmund Burke (1729-97) was acknowledged by friend and foe alike to be without intellectual equal in the House of Commons, and he has always since been accepted as the supreme example of the practical-minded intellectual in British politics. He is still the most often quoted of British statesmen or political writers. This biography sets him against the background of contemporary events and his personal and family circumstances, to reveal a man of principle and theory who played politics as theatre and set standards of debate and argument still not bettered.