A narrative life of 18th-century jurist William Blackstone, renowned for distilling dense English common law into a more readily understood framework. The fatherless son of minor gentry, Blackstone rose through diligent classical studies to a place at Oxford’s All Souls, where postgraduate and administrative energies led to intra-university political activity. His initial foray as a London barrister was unsuccessful; his lectures on the common law made him a name; but his taking most of the income of newly endowed chair earned Blackstone a whiff of odium. Or was it more simply undignified ambition in Hanoverian and Georgian England? The future George III was a fan, Jeremy Bentham was not. The author’s counterbalances his own opinion. Later an MP, Blackstone was only modestly effective because of his back-bench independence and also a diffident speaking style: he failed notably during the rough-and-tumble of the Wilkes affair. But his practice grew, and some years after leaving Oxford for good, he won the judgeship he sought. Again opinions were divided, between churlish, high-church Tory and diligent national treasure. In fact he was something of a rationalist modernizer. Like Everitt’s

Cicero

, the book could spend a bit more time elucidating the kernel of Blackstone’s thinking itself.