Malcolm Bull writes:

Black Mass may be a disappointing book, but it is the outcome of an intellectual journey of some interest and significance. For two decades, Gray has been a consistently original commentator on current affairs. Funny, incisive and provocative (qualities quite sparsely distributed among post-Rawlsian political theorists), Gray also has one very distinctive virtue: an uncanny ability to articulate a rising consensus while almost simultaneously viewing it, sub specie aeternitatis, as a symptom of some localised illusion. The delay between the two has been the interval of his various commitments – neoliberal, conservative, Blairite and Green. Sometimes uncharitably seen as a Vicar of Bray, Gray is actually someone who is receptive to new evidence and prepared to revise his views in the light of it. Other, more consistent ideologues have come and gone, consigned to irrelevance by their obvious intransigence in the face of events. Gray remains, a bellwether for Thatcher’s children.

(LRB 1 November 2007)

Allen Lane | hardback 243 pp. |ISBN: 9780713999150