Invoking the name of Thomas Jefferson , third
President of the Union and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, is even today a ritual in American politics. But how American was he?
To mark the 250th anniversary of Jefferson's birth, David Walker draws on the statesman's own writings and on conversations with historians, political scientists and constitutionalists to evoke the life of one of the most effective intellectuals to have entered political life. Producer Simon Coates