Nicola Lacey
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A Life Of H. L. A. Hart: The Nightmare And The Noble Dream
Nicola Lacey
Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was born in Yorkshire in 1907 to second-generation Jewish immigrants. Having won a scholarship to Oxford University, he later became the most famous legal philosopher of the twentieth century.
From 1932-40 Hart practised as a barrister in London. He was pronounced physically unfit for military service in 1940, and recruited by MI5, where he worked until 1945. Whilst at the Bar he continued to study philosophy and at MI5 his interest was further stimulated by his philosopher colleagues in MI6, Stuart Hampshire and Gilbert Ryle. After the war, Hart returned to Oxford to take up a Philosophy Fellowship, and later the Professorship of Jurisprudence.
H.L.A. Hart single-handedly reinvented the philosophy of law and influenced the nation’s thinking on the legalization of abortion and homosexuality, and on the abolition of capital punishment.
Nicola Lacey draws on Hart’s previously unpublished diaries and letters to reveal a complex inner life. Outwardly succesful, Hart was tormented by doubts about his intellectual abilities, his sexual identity, and his capacity…
