SOURCE: Foot, Paul. “Excusing the Messenger.” Spectator 281, no. 8866 (11 July 1998): 31.

In the following review, Foot commends Paulin's analysis of Hazlitt's prose in The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style but finds fault in Paulin's failure to address unflattering and contradictory aspects of Hazlitt's life.

Throughout the reading of this thrilling book [The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style] I was haunted by a memory. In 1991, when I was working on a radio programme about poetry and revolution, Fiona Maclean of the BBC instructed me to interview a reader in poetry at Nottingham University I had never heard of called Tom Paulin. In the recording studio he listened impatiently to our intentions. He had only one question: ‘Who is reading the poetry?’ An actor, we assured him. He was visibly irritated. No, he replied, he was going to read it. Seizing his copy of Paradise Lost, eyes sparkling...