2006 saw the bicentary of the death of the Whig leader Charles James Fox. A proponent of the supremacy of Parliament, the freedom of the press and the rights and civil liberties of the people, and a believer in reform, rationalism and progress, rather than repression, the ideas he defended particularly over the challenge of the state to the liberties of the individual in time of war are as relevant to our own times as to those of the Britain of 200 years ago.