A lively dual biography of the two great English orators of the eighteenth century, who cultivated a friendship across their political differences. In eighteenth-century Britain, Edmund Burke and Charles Fox made common political cause for twenty-five years. They supported the rebellious American colonies, attacked the British slave trade, defended religious liberty, and attempted to shield Britain’s public credit from the crisis-prone East India Company. The two men did not share social position, a way of life, a political legacy, or even a generation―but improbably, they were friends. The hard-drinking, mistress-collecting Fox loved and admired Burke, feelings that the clean-living political philosopher and statesman warmly reciprocated. Friends Until the End tells the story of two men who hailed from different worlds, yet thrived together in the London intellectual sphere. With wit and panache, James Grant traces their relationship through three great events: the American Revolution; the impeachment of the East India Company’s governor-general; and the French Revolution, which ended their political union and shattered their friendship. Fox, the cosseted heir of a rich English political family, sported George Washington’s colors in London during the American revolution, while Burke, the son of an Irish lawyer, opened Warren Hastings’s 1778 impeachment trial with remarks that lasted four days. Before their rupture, both men enthusiastically shared a love of language and literature, trading Latin tags and Shakespearean quotations between speeches in Parliament. Today, Burke’s writing forms the intellectual core of modern conservativism, while Fox’s ideals and oratory inspired generations of nineteenth-century English Whigs and Liberals. As Grant shows, Fox and Burke were uniquely suited to their long, enduring careers marked by political opposition―they possessed the fluency, self-command, and principle that allowed them to resist, most often, what they regarded as an overreaching British crown. Along with the men’s two remarkable lives, Friends Until the End illuminates their era’s politics, economics, and lessons for our divided times. 8 pages of color illustrations "A gifted writer. In 'Friends Until the End," [Grant] explains the complexities of 18th-century British politics with efficiency and verve." ― Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal "Illuminating… Grant's enthusiasm for both his subjects is winning." ― Leo Damrosch, New York Times "Imaginative… A highly accessible account of the relationship between two of the most powerful orators in the British parliament." ― Ian Crowe, Law & Liberty "A lively history informed by deep research… Grant depicts the political rivalries and debates to which both men responded." ― Kirkus Reviews "James Grant conveys the principles as brilliantly as he captures the personalities of Edmund Burke and Charles Fox, unlikely friends who remain lodestars for conservatives and liberals in the twenty-first century. Friends Until the End is a masterful study of what united these very different statesmen―and what ultimately drove them apart to give us the modern divide between left and right." ― Daniel McCarthy, editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review and contributing editor of The American Conservative Praise for Friends Until the End “Bagehot was a financial journalist with a love of English literature and a facility for clear and cogent prose. So is Mr. Grant. . . . Bagehot is a terrific and efficient survey of the political and economic disputations of mid-Victorian England and a fine narrative of the life of the era’s most brilliant essayist.” ― Barton Swaim, The Wall Street Journal “Very enjoyable. . . . Grant demonstrates that he has the measure of a fascinating―and great―Victorian.” ― John Plender, Financial Times “James Grant [is] one of the most influential contemporary commentators on Wall Street. . . . In Grant’s hands, Bagehot’s life and career provide a superb prism through which to observe the extraordinary revolution in the British economy in the nineteenth century.” ― Simon Nixon, The Times (London) James Grant founded Grant’s Interest Rate Observer , a financial markets journal, and authored Bagehot and The Forgotten Depression , which won the Hayek Prize. His writing has appeared in the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal . He lives in Brooklyn, New York.