It was impassioned to the point of verging on a rant - the personal and the political influences and convictions of the education secretary coming together in a highly combustible mix.
The speech covered a lot of ground in its examination of the 'making of an educational underclass' - from school-readiness to phonics to physical contact to soldiers as male role models.
It veered into the ridiculous when Gove spoke of his admiration for academy sponsor Phil Harris of Carpetright, whose firm, Gove said, has brought 'high-quality, low-cost flooring solutions to thousands'. How this tortured expression for 'carpets', sounding as though it had come straight off the side of a Carpetright van, made its way into the supposedly erudite minister's speech is something of a mystery!
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