British Commonwealth of Nations: On Whom the Jest?

For a generation the scintillant acumen of Lord Birkenhead has won him the name of lynx at the bar and lion among the ladies. While Lord High Chancellor of Britain (1919-22) he was revealed as a sphynx possessed of corroding scorn and a face so immobile as to suggest paralysis. To round out the quatrefoil of his quadruped characteristics, the Earl of Birkenhead habitually walks with a sodden heavy stride, his hands held dangling before his chest like the paws of a performing bear. But when he...