In 1992 Lord Hailsham, one of our oldest elder statesmen, had a spiritual crisis. He became disillusioned with the state of the world around him. Since he was eighty-five at the time this was something of an achievement; some of us reach the same point when more than fifty years younger. It was not merely a religious problem, but one that went to the heart of questions of morality, values and other secular philosophical considerations. As one of the few genuine intellectuals to have held high office in recent years, Lord Hailsham is adequately equipped to set out his views on this event in terms that straddle religion, philosophy and politics. The result is this book.

One former colleague of Lord Hailsham's once categorised him to me as a 'very clever small boy who has never grown up'. He has often been guilty of embarrassing public misjudgements and displays of overemotionalism, so as to make some of us wonder whether we were always watching an entirely