Like many people who undertake lengthy and painstaking research into arcane subject matter, Stuart tends to exaggerate its importance. He demonstrates that there has been a vegetarian strain in European political thought for the last four centuries, and teases out the intellectual connections between the various, often obscure but sometimes eminent authors whom he cites. (His chapter on Rousseau is particularly interesting.) But he does not really make out a case that this strain was in practice of any great importance, except in the case of Gandhi, or that our world would have been much different without it. His judgment is sometimes suspect, as when he applies the word humane to Napoleon. An occasional descent into the demotic is jarring: ‘Even St Augustine of Canterbury had allowed the Brits to continue sacrificing oxen.’
He finally reveals himself to be a moderate, or modified, vegetarian. He does not hold with the doctrinaire adherents of animal rights, who (in the case of Professor Singer) are also no friends of babies whom they consider defective and therefore unworthy of life. He recognises that there are large areas of the world which are suitable only for grazing, and that therefore some consumption of meat is permissible. He is against the destruction of forests for the production of beef, however. But his conclusions do not require or rest upon his exhaustive, and frankly exhausting, historical research. I value his book mainly as a treasury of literary byways.
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