Over time, I have come to see that the questions I am interested in do not arise in isolation. They sit within a particular intellectual tradition, one that is distinctively English in character, and which holds together imagination, moral realism, and practical judgement. I feel extremely fortunate that I have been unconsciously exposed to profound ideas, from the age of four, but only now as a lawyer, applying these ideas, do I see the significance of that early education, and I want to make my contribution, however small, to the preservation of these insights.

At one end of this tradition stands William Blake, who recognised that reality is not exhausted by mechanism or measurement, but is fundamentally imaginative. For Blake, human beings do not stand outside the world as neutral observers; we participate in it through perception. When that imaginative dimension is reduced or denied, both individual psychology and civilisation itself become distorted. His doctrine of contraries suggests that growth arises not from the elimination of tension, but from its disciplined integration.

Alongside this, T. H. Green gave philosophical and institutional form to a related intuition. He understood the person as essentially self-realising within a moral order, and freedom not as mere choice, but as participation in the common good. In his work, law, ethics, and civic life are not separate domains, but expressions of a deeper account of human flourishing.

These strands are brought into a more accessible unity in C. S. Lewis, who re-presented moral realism and the reality of the transcendent in terms intelligible to the modern world. Lewis showed that reason, imagination, and faith are not competing faculties, but mutually reinforcing ways of apprehending truth. In his writing, the moral law is both objective and experientially known, and the symbolic and the rational are held together rather than set apart.

This work is best understood as an attempt to continue that convergence, but with a particular emphasis on application. Its concern is not only to understand these principles, but to embody them in functioning systems; in law, in business, and in civic life.

It proceeds on a number of working assumptions:

• that reality is intelligible because it is grounded in a deeper, mind-like order
• that human beings are formed through responsibility rather than abstraction
• that institutions succeed when their structures align with moral and psychological truth
• and that judgement, rather than mere process, is the central human function in any enduring system

In this sense, the project is not theoretical so much as practical. It is concerned with building structures that are technically competent, morally serious, and humanly intelligible, on the basis that civilisation is sustained not by ideas alone, but by the quality of the systems through which those ideas are lived.

As a young man, I took for granted the existence of these traditions and institutions, but now I realise they are constructed and maintained by people who observe, think and act. Following my move back to England, two years before covid, I have had time to think, and now I want to put my shoulder to the wheel of action.