Thomas Paine's Rights of Man by Christopher Hitchens

I've got to stop reading books late at night - I don't take them in and I don't remember them properly. Still, you can always reread books, unless you've lent them to someone.

The main reason I wanted to read this was that it got a sniffy review in the LRB. John Lanchester (or someone) got terribly excited about the fact that John Frost wasn't the secretary of the London Corresponding Society. He's only mentioned once, in passing, and the London Corresponding Society is also only mentioned once. If it was really indicative of shoddy research, then I can't help but feel that JL would have actually found some slightly more significant errors as well. It looks more like he's trawled through the book, with google at the ready, and desperately tried to find errors.

It's not really an academic book, in that sense. It describes the history of The Rights Of Man (I seem to remember the review was aghast that Hitchens sometimes refers to it as Rights Of Man, and sometimes as The Rights Of Man. Which is clearly unforgivable.) but I wouldn't describe it as a history of the book. It puts it in an historical context, and talks about Burke's reflections on the French Revolution which it was written in response to, and it was definitely worth reading.

I suspect the problem is that Hitchens doesn't have the right view on Iraq. The big shibboleth of the media is saying the right things about Iraq, and if it varies even by a syllable then you can be cast out. I'll come back to this book when I've read it properly, and if I ever get my books out of storage, I'll reread the Rights of Man. Sorry, The Rights of Man.