"Gertrude Himmelfarb and the Politics of Virtue," The Economist, January 11, 2020.
The Bagehot column of the Economist on Gertrude Himmelfarb:
The last of the great Victorian intellectuals died on December 30th. Gertrude Himmelfarb wasn’t a Victorian in the literal sense, either chronologically or geographically: she was born in Brooklyn, in 1922, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia, and lived most of her life in Manhattan or Washington, dc. She was nevertheless a Victorian in spirit: she devoted her career to studying Victorian intellectuals—her favourite was Walter Bagehot—and shared that era’s stern moral values. She was also a master of a very Victorian art form: the highbrow essay designed not for an academic clique but for the educated public.