Philip Bobbitt on Machiavelli, Obama and David Cameron

It may be pushing it to compare Philip Bobbitt with Indiana Jones, on the basis that a constitutional lawyer will never have the exotic and uncommercial appeal of an archaeologist adventurer, even if he does look remarkably similar. Then again, a profile of him in the New York Observer called him the James Bond of the Columbia Law School, which also suggests impossible glamour.

But you can see why his students and reviewers come over star-struck. He’s a courteous, urbane, well-connected (nephew of Lyndon B. Johnson) literary academic, adviser of presidents but way above the party fray, possibly the last Wasp standing in the academic elite, certainly the last cigar-smoker, a Big Name in western foreign policy circles by virtue of his last two books, The Shield of Achilles and Terror and Consent. He’s now 63. There was general fascination with his second marriage — at the Supreme Court, if you please — a couple of years ago to Maya, a Turkish law student, a formidable young polyglot who showjumps for Turkey and engages in deep sea diving.