Edmund Burke, by Conor Cruise O'Brien (New Island Books, £12.99)

This is a shortened version of a work which has already gone into paperback; whatever the merit of the individual abridgments (and I do not claim to have studied them in any detail) the book as a whole surely becomes more accessible. Burke, of course, is ultratopical now, with his bi centenary upon us, and as a statesman-thinker he represents a special kind of via media for liberals who do not wish to lapse into reaction. In spite of his acknowledged greatness as an orator, his speeches had a way of emptying the House, while as a pragmatic politician he was relatively a failure. His writings and ideas, however, live on and in some ways are more relevant now than ever.