Summary

The new face of the £20 note, Adam Smith was long ago adopted as the father of a neo-conservative economic ideology, not least by Thatcher and Reagan.

The new face of the £20 note, Adam Smith was long ago adopted as the father of a neo-conservative economic ideology, not least by Thatcher and Reagan. More recently New Labour has tried to kidnap him as an ancestor. In a vigorous and informal book James Buchan shows that Smith fits no modern political category. As befits the most accessible of all philosophers, this biography does entirely without jargon.