Of all the many tributes to Michael Foot it was David Cameron who hit the nail on the head. He was, Cameron said, 'almost the last link to a more heroic age in politics'. In appearance, and demeanour, Foot resembled an Old Testament prophet. An impression which, in later life, his shock of white hair, the passion of his delivery and the magnificence of his rhetoric served only to enhance. Born a year before the outbreak of World War One into a prominent West Country Liberal family and brought up in a world of erudition, radical politics and puritanical Methodism, he was also, as one of his obituarists remarked, brought up to believe that to vote Tory was the ultimate sin.

LRB 25 March 2010 | PDF Download