This is the first edition of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France for twenty years. No edition of his other writings on the subject - Hints for a Memorial to be delivered to Monsieur de M M (1791), Preface to Brissot's Address to his Constituents (1794), and others - have appeared for over a century. Oxford is therefore doing a service, albeit for £65 per unillustrated, dull-jacketed copy.

For all the impeccable scholarship of this edition, which places Burke's work in its exact historical context, the overriding fact quickly emerges that Burke was not primarily interested either in France or its Revolution. He made relatively few speeches on the subject, preferring to concentrate on the (for him) far more absorbing impeachment of Warren Hastings.

In Reflections, Burke was enunciating his philosophy of life, politics and religion first, he was writing a superb piece of literature second and was ripping into a canting Dissenter minister Dr Price third. Analysis of events in France came a very poor fourth, only really interesting him insofar as they