Judging by the frequency with which they are—or rather used to be—quoted, the most famous words in Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons (1960) come in response to the contention by William Roper that he would “cut down every law in England” to get at the Devil. Roper’s father-in-law, Sir (later Saint) Thomas More, replies:
Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
Back in 2008, the British columnist Daniel Finkelstein quoted this passage and proceeded to ask: “Are there wiser words in literature? . . . Perhaps there are more exquisite phrases to be found on the nature of love or more descriptive passages on the horror of war. But when it comes to politics and statesmanship, surely there are none finer.”
The occasion of this observation was the inquest then being held into the death of Princess Diana a decade earlier, at the insistance of Mohamed Al-Fayed, the billionaire father of Dodi Fayed, her lover who died in the Parisian car crash along with her. “Was there
