The political philosopher Michael Oakeshott died in December 1990, a few days after his 89th birthday. He had enjoyed a fair if controversial reputation in his lifetime among his colleagues, but he never became a global guru in the manner of (say) Gunnar Myrdal, J.K. Galbraith, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, or his own predecessor in the Chair of Political Science at the London School of Economics, Harold Laski. (It is perhaps worth noting, as a sign of the times, how many of these eminences are or were economists.)