The genteel, silver-tongued thinker who fathered US conservatism - and paved the way for Trump

A new biography digs into the life of William F Buckley Jr. Its author thinks the rightwing intellectual has some lessons for the left

Back when the “public intellectual” was still a thriving species in America, the conservative writer William F Buckley Jr was one of the most famous – of any political stripe.

On the PBS television show Firing Line, which he hosted weekly until 1999, he debated or interviewed people ranging from ardent rightwingers to black nationalists. In between, he edited the magazine National Review, wrote three columns a week, wrote or dictated hundreds of letters a month, and was known to dash off a book while on vacation. He was photographed working at a typewriter in the back of a limousine as a dog looked on. In Aladdin (1992), Robin Williams’s genie does Buckley as one of his impressions.