..Born in Boston in 1948, Taylor was, according to his memoir, “brought up devoted to progressive politics, self-improvement and the arts”. His father, a doctor, moved the family to the south when he became the dean of the medical school of the University of North Carolina; his mother didn’t want to go, and fought against the politics she found there. She saw the north-eastern state of Massachusetts as a “lost Eden” and would spend her days doing sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, on protests, and hauling her five kids to Martha’s Vineyard every summer to “restore our Yankee credentials”. Not...