Cripps's generation grew to maturity in a world which shattered, apparently irrevocably, after a devastating war of four years' duration. A new world, which historians currently describe as the era of total war, unfolded after the Armistice. Revolutions precipitated in Russia and Germany and their aftermath continued to exert a profound influence on the political situation in the rest of Europe. Another total war, lasting six years, culminated in an unexpectedly difficult transition to peace throughout Europe, creating new stresses and preoccupations from which the British political establishment was by no means exempt. In 1945, the UK's first majority Labour government faced a world in which its influence was severely constrained by both of the country's former allies, the United States and the Soviet Union. A third new world, of decolonisation, Cold War and austerity, had begun.

The problem for a Cripps biographer is particularly acute. Clarke has approached it with the technical flair of a practised, conscientious historian and resolved it with literary elegance and verve. He warns readers that they 'should not expect to find each year of its subject's life given equal attention, still less equal space', and states that he has written with 'the aim of enriching our understanding of puzzling, neglected or fugitive aspects of one man's life in history'.

Nevertheless, he has used a professional historian's eye in selecting the episodes to which he devotes most care and attention. While not pretending to provide a history of the times, Clarke offers a brilliant sketch of the background which greatly enhances Cripps's trajectory. His concise footnotes include the raw material for further reading. Readers will find themselves well equipped to dig further.

Cripps was typical of young political activists in the 1920s in continuing to be pre-occupied by the spectre of the past war. Clarke quotes from Cripps's diary for 1920: 'one feels as if one were on the edge of a volcano--at any moment we may come to a crisis leading to revolution.' Typical of other leaders in his generation, Cripps had risen to fill responsible positions in 1914-18. Like his peers, he consolidated his position, and moved on to occupy a centre-stage position in political life during 1939-45, bringing his previous wartime experience fruitfully to bear in dealing with similar problems the second time around.

While Cripps's wartime service as ambassador to the Soviet Union and his tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer are given less space than the Indian episodes, Clarke has performed near-miracles of historical distillation, particularly in regard to Cripps's role in government in 1947-51. I gained new insights from his account of the personal chemistry inside the Cabinet, the workings of the Treasury and the influence of Keynes's ideas.

Cripps was exemplary in displaying the intellectual courage to face the third period in his life, and to discover its new conditions and constraints. The outstanding example is his brokering of Britain's disengagement from India in 1946. While his previous missions to India in 1939 and 1942 had familiarised him with personalities and internal balances of political power, just four years later he nevertheless faced a dramatically changed international political constellation, as well as a different Cabinet and House of Commons to which he was ultimately responsible. He successfully adjusted to them all.

There were, however, significant hidden nooks and crannies in Cripps's life which I felt needed more exposition in order to judge the whole man, as opposed to his place in the broad sweep of history. The first was his period working for the Ministry of Munitions, particularly his time in managing the Queens-ferry sulphuric acid works in 1916-17. Though short in duration, the experience was evidently formative. It was also a highly unusual way for a young man of his social class and familial niche to spend the war. I wanted to know much more of the detail, the substance of his working life and personal relationships at work, and what he thought about it all. (I would also have appreciated some references to material in the Public Record Office on Queensferry.)

The second neglected episode was Cripps's career as a barrister. From Clarke's description of the Indian negotiations and his term at the Treasury, it is abundantly clear how central his legal experience was in shaping his political career. It was not as an original thinker or charismatic leader, but rather as a speedy analyst and formidable synthesiser that Cripps made his unique mark. But how had he developed his forensic and advocacy skills? I wanted to know about the fabric of Cripps's professional life in the 1930s. How had this very closed subculture affected and influenced the man?

For example, Clarke mentions Cripps's friendship with Walter Monckton KC, whom he dubs with mild hyperbole 'the ubiquitous Monckton' because of the regularity with which he turned up at unlikely times and places. Monckton acted as a discreet and influential messenger between Cripps, Churchill and Eden. In turn, Cripps dispensed political and moral advice for which Monckton was effusively grateful. A person's job is usually considered to be central to his or her being, and it would have been helpful to know more about Cripps the KC.

Finally, there was Cripps's stepmother, Marian Parmoor, and the Indian Conciliation Group (ICG) to which she was responsible for introducing Cripps. Clarke shows that Cripps and his wife formed close connections with the ICG, and that he used the ICG people as trusted go-betweens and advisers in all three missions to the country. Yet I was unable to form any notion of how formal the group's organisation had been or whether it had existed in both Britain and India. While the ICG and its members must be familiar household names to imperial historians, I found myself frustrated by lack of knowledge.

But these are minor caveats. Having started the book with no more than passing knowledge of Cripps's career and family connection to Beatrice Webb, I emerged with a sufficiently developed view to doubt Roy Jenkins's assessment, made in 1974 in Nine Men in Power, that Cripps exhibited 'singularly bad judgement of people. It was his major weakness ... he was often taken in by the foolish and unbalanced ... With individuals he had little critical faculty.'

To me, Jenkins extrapolated from his own apparently realpolitik approach to people in assuming Machiavellian qualities to be an essential prerequisite for political success. I felt Cripps understood people as fully and as shrewdly as most of his peers in government. But he adopted good faith and charitableness towards their motives and conduct whenever possible. This was not bad judgement, but rather the suspension of judgement until the facts became available. One might indeed speculate that this 'weakness' was due to a combination of his muscular Christianity and legal training.

The Cripps Version is thought-provoking and stimulating in a way that many biographies are not. Clarke declined, with exemplary self-discipline, to judge Cripps the person. He did not attempt to penetrate the fabric of Cripps's subjectivity. While he could hardly have endured the years of immersion required to write a biography without being drawn to Cripps, it is impossible to discern whether he is in sympathy with his subject. One is consequently able to fashion a picture of Cripps without being inhibited by Clarke's. Surely readers can ask for no greater pleasure than the opportunity to form their own view in this way.