CONTENTS
BOOK THE FIRST: THE MAKING OF A MAN
CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ CONCERNING A BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN
CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ BROMSTEAD AND MY FATHER
CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ SCHOLASTIC
CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~ ADOLESCENCE
CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ MARGARET IN STAFFORDSHIRE
CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ MARGARET IN LONDON
CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ MARGARET IN VENICE
CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~ THE HOUSE IN WESTMINSTER
BOOK THE THIRD: THE HEART OF POLITICS
CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ THE RIDDLE FOR THE STATESMAN
CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ SEEKING ASSOCIATES
CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ SECESSION
CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~ THE BESETTING OF SEX
CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ LOVE AND SUCCESS
1
Since I came to this place I have been very restless, wasting my energies in the futile beginning of ill-conceived books. One does not settle down very readily at two and forty to a new way of living, and I have found myself with the teeming interests of the life I have abandoned still buzzing like a swarm of homeless bees in my head. My mind has been full of confused protests and justifications. In any case I should have found difficulties enough in expressing the complex thing I have to tell, but it has added greatly to my trouble that I have a great analogue, that a certain Niccolo Machiavelli chanced to fall out of politics at very much the age I have reached, and wrote a book to engage the restlessness of his mind, very much as I have wanted to do. He wrote about the relation of the great constructive spirit in politics to individual character and weaknesses, and so far his achievement lies like a deep r