VINCENT BROWNE
A celebrated writer felt representative democracy was rotten as it left people out of key decisions in society.
A FORMER “best friend” described him as “false, vain as Satan, ungrateful, cruel, hypocritical and wicked”. He arranged for his five children to be given over to a foundling hospital immediately after their birth. He was vain, truculent, obsessive and solitary.
He changed his religion several times, probably opportunistically. And yet when he died he was one of the most admired people in his country of residence, and his remains were later moved to a distinguished resting place in the nation's capital. His ideas were among the most formative of his and later ages.