Checks and balances

In January 2024, Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield delivered an uncharacteristically terse and direct speech which is included in this book, on the decision of Rishi Sunak’s government to push through the Rwanda Bill, stating that it “removed [Britain] from the list of rule-of-law nations”. That the seventy-six-year-old Hennessy was prepared to face the consequent invective from the right-wing press (Quentin Letts referred to him as “an ex-newspaper hack” in the Daily Mail) and speak out, despite his increasingly debilitating Parkinson’s disease, was typical of an eminent public scholar who has become more rather than less productive in his seventies. Although, as in this collection of old and new essays, speeches, lectures and reminiscences, he has sometimes had to work with a co-author (in this case his daughter), it is clear that the seriousness of the threat to the delicate British political system of checks and balances posed by Boris Johnson (who Lord Hennessy famously called “the great debaser”) as well as his immediate successors, has stimulated him to act in vigorous defence of it.

The title of this entertaining, often sobering collection comes from James Callaghan’s description to Hennessy of the largely unwritten codes of convention, improvisation and custom which make up the British constitution and which, Hennessy, admits, he has never quite managed to put his finger on, despite five decades of trying. The central new essay, “A UK state of mind”, is vintage Hennessy; quotable, clear-sighted, unashamedly romantic, unburdened by dogma or jargon; and radical, yet conservative (I admit to finding his admiration of the Royal Family and the senior Civil Service baffling given their near-total self-interest). In its pithy, personal yet panoptic tone, it is strongly reminiscent of Orwell’s wartime essays – with the author’s deep knowledge of contemporary politics and society worn very lightly. I think Hennessy knows there is no higher praise for a British essayist.

No collection of writings, even one as wide-ranging and eclectic as this one, can capture Hennessy’s true genius. Whether he is praising his great hero, Attlee, explaining the reasons behind the Brexit vote or hearing the backroom gossip about his days at The Times, it is always an education and a pleasure to spend time with his “life in writing”. If this volume is a sort of testament to the range of Hennessy’s career, it ought to be followed by a proper festschrift by those taught by, inspired by and even those reprimanded by the finest living British contemporary historian and constitutionalist. Sadly, I fear few publishers would accept a manuscript that long.

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