William Keegan at Literary Review:
As the title indicates, this is a book about liberalism and The Economist’s propagation of it. But as the great Professor Joad would have said, ‘It all depends what you mean by liberalism.’ These days there is much talk of the differences between political liberalism, economic liberalism and social liberalism. In the 19th century, when The Economist was establishing its reputation, its commitment to free trade and capitalism was such that, with regard to the humanitarian 1844 Factory Act, it could opine: ‘the more it is investigated, the more we are compelled to acknowledge that in any interference with industry and capital, the law is powerful only for evil, but utterly powerless for good.’
Zevin points out that, from the Crimean War to the present day, The Economist has championed ‘liberal imperialism’, to the point where one of its journalists felt able to come out in a farewell speech with the crack that, in all his time there, The Economist ‘never saw a war it didn’t like’.
more here.