It is hard to reconcile these two Adams, but Brooks argues that Adam II has been displaced by Adam I, morality by utility, character by celebrity. We live in “the age of the selfie”: a society that has been transformed beyond recognition since 1945, materially successful but spiritually impoverished. His book consists of a series of portraits of individuals who exemplify what has been lost: leaders and writers, saints and sinners, all of whom attained some kind of tranquillity by struggling to overcome their inner demons. That kind of “U-shaped” life, usually marked by suffering, crisis and redemption, is rarer today. So are the humility and nobility that come from acceptance of our limitations and renunciation of pride. Brooks concludes with a “Humility Code”, setting out 15 propositions by which to live. This is not a self-help book, but a guide for the perplexed; even so, its purpose is to show how men and women of character arrive at the maturity we instinctively recognise in them.

What has The Road to Character to do with the new Conservative government? In my view, everything: what the country is crying out for is a government of grown-ups. Only after his decade-long apprenticeship in Opposition and in the Coalition has the electorate finally decided to give David Cameron its full confidence. He has indeed grown in office, partly no doubt as a result of personal tragedy — the loss of his disabled son clearly hit him hard — and adversity is a good teacher. The mature judgment that was sometimes lacking in the past was manifest in his victory speech on the steps of Downing Street:

We can make Britain a place where a good life is in reach for everyone who is willing to work and do the right thing . . . we will govern as a party of one nation, one United Kingdom . . . I have always believed in governing with respect . . . this is a country with unrivalled skills and creativeness, a country with such good humour and compassion. And I am convinced that if we can draw on all of this, then we can take these islands, with our proud history, and build an even prouder future. Together, we can make Great Britain greater still.

The Prime Minister is right, of course, to connect a “good life” with working hard and doing the right thing. The importance of the Protestant work ethic has been understood at least since Max Weber, and the work ethic long predates not only the Reformation but Christianity itself: after the Fall, God tells Adam “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”. But “doing the right thing” is a much grander concept than work: in Brooks’s words, it implies morality rather than utility. Mr Cameron enlarges on this vision by his emphasis, first, on one nation — with its echo of Disraeli’s Sybil: “Two nations . . . the rich and the poor” — and, secondly, on respect: a virtue debased by over-familiarity, but which ultimately derives from the Judaeo-Christian idea that we are all made in the image of God. Finally, the Prime Minister evokes a vivid image of the British people, reminiscent of Milton’s Areopagitica: “A nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.”

All this is well said. David Cameron’s words do not compare badly with Margaret Thatcher’s on the same steps in 1979. She too appealed to unity: “May we get together and strive to serve and strengthen the country of which we’re so proud to be a part.” She too appealed to the work ethic, citing her mentor Airey Neave, who had been killed at Westminster by Irish terrorists only months before: “There is now work to be done.” She risked ridicule by daring to quote St Francis of Assisi: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.” The big difference is that in 1979 Mrs Thatcher was rescuing a country on the brink of political, economic and social bankruptcy, while Mr Cameron has a more manageable list of headaches, headed by Europe and Scotland, discussed elsewhere in this issue by Stephen Glover. The present government needs a moral framework because it may otherwise lose direction. That was never Mrs Thatcher’s problem.