When William F. Buckley, Jr., stepped down as editor in chief of the National Review in November 1990, he ended day-to-day involvement with the magazine he founded in 1955 to present a "responsible dissent from Liberal orthodoxy." During Buckley's thirty-five-year editorship, the magazine became one of the most influential journals of political opinion in the United States. He himself became one of the most recognizable figures in American journalism in addition to becoming both an inspiration and an icon to several generations of political conservatives. Although dismissed by some critics as a mere gadfly, Buckley's success as an editor, novelist, syndicated newspaper columnist, television host, and sometime politician mark him as more than that. Buckley's sometimes-lonely and sometimes-strident advocacy of conservative policies was instrumental in laying the foundation for the conservative revival of the 1960s and its triumph in the 1980s.

William Francis Buckley, Jr., was born on 24 November 1925 in...