Description
Book SynopsisOffers a collection of remarkable biographical portraits. This book brings to life a range of prominent twentieth-century thinkers, politicians, and writers.
Trade Review"Welcoming and rewarding... [Berlin] is at his most conversational. This splendid book bring[s] the past to life."--Peter Stansky, New York Times Book Review "[Berlin's] writing has all the elan of conversation. [His] sense of humor ... Preserves a frank delight in human contradiction."--V. S. Pritchett, New York Review of Books "Contains many amusing and revealing anecdotes."--Dan Jacobson, Times Literary Supplement "An amazingly enjoyable book."--Christopher Hitchens, New Statesman "Marvellously good reading."--Alan Ryan, Sunday Times (London) "A thrilling and agreeable work... [W]armly commended."--Peter Jay, Washington Post Book World "An enthralling collection... It is hard to think of any other writer who is so penetrating, so amusing, and yet so entirely free of malice."--Anthony Storr, Spectator "Marvellous... It is one of Berlin's most endearing characteristics that he can admire so many utterly diverse people, that he can tell us about them all, and see the point of them."--Mary Warnock, Listener "Provides an invigorating spectacle of the liberal mind at its most assured and unobstructed, glorying in the variety of human character and achievement."--Anthony Quinton, Encounter
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations xi Foreword by Hermione Lee xv Author's Preface to the First Edition xxxi Editor's Preface xxxv Winston Churchill in 1940 1 Hubert Henderson at All Souls 30 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 37 Richard Pares 50 Chaim Weizmann 57 Felix Frankfurter at Oxford 97 Aldous Huxley 108 L. B. Namier 121 Maurice Bowra 148 J. L. Austin and the Early Beginnings of Oxford Philosophy 156 John Petrov Plamenatz 177 Auberon Herbert 187 Einstein and Israel 195 Where Was I? 211 Maynard and Lydia Keynes 218 Nahum Goldmann 225 Memories of Brief Meetings with Ben-Gurion 235 Martin Cooper 243 Yitzhak Sadeh 252 Adam von Trott 269 David Cecil 273 Edmund Wilson at Oxford 283 Memories of Virginia Woolf 298 Alexander and Salome Halpern 304 Jewish Oxford 323 Herbert Hart 330 Corpuscle 337 Stephen Spender 347 Meetings with Russian Writers in 1945 and 1956 356 Epilogue: The Three Strands in My Life 433 Afterword by Noel Annan 441 Index 465
