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It is 160 years since Thomas Carlyle wrote On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History, but the treatise was in my mind as I watched Sir Jeremy Greenstock, our former Ambassador to the United Nations, give evidence on Iraq to the Chilcot inquiry yesterday. Another time came flooding back. You could almost hear the drumbeat of war. Could Britain, could Tony Blair, have chosen to march to any other drum?

The invasion of Iraq at the beginning of our century provides a canvas so richly painted with the clash and convergence of interests, and so crowded with large and lurid personalities, that there is scope here for Carlylians (who believe individuals determine history) to do battle with Marxians (who see leaders as the playthings of larger forces) until the crack of doom. But...