A Guide to the Classics, or, How to Pick the Derby Winner will surprise readers who know only Michael Oakeshott’s major works of political philosophy. It was first published in 1936 and in revised form in 1947. It is not well known and copies of it until now have been hard to find. I acquired a copy of the first edition when, teaching Oakeshott in an undergraduate class at my college nearly thirty years ago, I remarked in passing that I had never found a copy of the book for purchase; I was frustrated in my quest to acquire copies of all Oakeshott’s works. Shortly after Christmas that year, I received the book in the mail. One of my students was a young Englishwoman who grew up with horses on the Isle of Man. She later told me of a bookshop in London known to all people in the horse business for specializing in horse books. While home for the holidays, she went there and found the book to send me as a present. Since then I have acquired also a copy of the later edition. I am of course ever grateful to her. Amphora Press has now added this to their publication list of books by and about Oakeshott. In his 1944 Presidential Address to the Virgil Society, “What Is A Classic?,” T. S. Eliot referred to the book (his firm, Faber & Faber, had published it) as offering one of the various connotations of “classic.”

Griffith