After surveying eighty years of the UK’s political and constitutional journey, Peter Hennessy prepares to bid farewell to public life. And he’s left with one thought: that the essential quality of decency needs to be placed—once again—back at the heart of public life and public discourse. But what does decency look like today, where does it spring from, and how might we all play a role in recentering it in public life? In this book, Hennessy considers such issues alongside a group of people who might pick up his baton. He has been inviting old friends, colleagues, and those he has long admired, along with younger voices from politics and public life, into his home for conversations about what decency means to them. And he will be reflecting on what they have shared with him.

 

Hennessy’s interest in this question springs from a concern about constitutional proprieties, but these conversations range much further afield—from the constitution to service delivery, from schooling to social media. What he hears is both worrying and uplifting: a real sense that there is a problem, a real commitment to tackle it, and ideas for how that might be done, and what role all of us can play.