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John Freeman: polymath or psychopath?

The highly gifted Freeman emerges a very odd, elusive fish from Hugh Purcell’s dogged biography, written without its subject’s co-operation

15 August 2015

9:00 AM

15 August 2015

9:00 AM

A Very Private Celebrity: The Nine Lives of John Freeman Hugh Purcell

The Robson Press,/Biteback, pp.368, 25, ISBN: 9781849548618

They don’t make Englishmen like the aptly named John Freeman any more. When he died last Christmas just shy of his centenary, the obituaries — once they had expressed astonishment that this titan from the age of Attlee and empire had still been around —paid tribute to a polymath whose achievements could fill nine more ordinary lives.

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