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Books

Benjamin Franklin: from man about town to man on the run

George Goodwin focuses on Franklin’s London years, which saw the brilliant polymath’s career abruptly ended by the American War of Independence

27 February 2016

9:00 AM

27 February 2016

9:00 AM

Benjamin Franklin in London: The British Life of America’s Founding Father George Goodwin

Weidenfeld, pp.365, £25, ISBN: 9780297871538

Just who was Benjamin Franklin? Apart, that is, from journalist, statesman, diplomat, founding father of the United States, inventor of the lightning rod, the Franklin Stove, the milometer, swimming flippers and the flexible catheter, the man who engineered the America postal system, who established the first lending library, who wrote one of the finest autobiographies in the language, and who schooled us in soundbites such as ‘Let all men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly.’

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £22.50. Tel: 08430 600033.Frances Wilson is the author of The Courtesan’s Revenge and Literary Seductions.

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