Isaiah Berlin
On the road, high society style
In 1949, aged 26, Judy Montagu, cousin of Mary Churchill and daughter of Venetia Stanley, criss-crossed the US in a Greyhound bus. The resulting diary is edited and annotated by her daughter, whose mother died when she was only nine
The Spectator letter that marked a turning point in gay history
Signing his real name (a brave decision for a homosexual in 1960), Roger Butler sparked a good deal of discussion on a ‘shunned topic’, which eventually led to a change in the law
‘I’ve seen controllers come and go’: Radio 3’s Michael Berkeley interviewed
A few years ago I had a panic-stricken phone call from a female friend. ‘Help!’ she wailed. ‘Remind me what…
The chilly charm of Clarissa Eden
Glamorous, enigmatic and well read, Anthony Eden’s wife was a discreet but unmistakable influence in Downing Street in the mid-1950s
What do we mean when we talk about freedom?
When the Yale historian and bestselling author Timothy Snyder was 14, his parents took him to Costa Rica, a country…
Hogging the limelight
Contemplating ‘hedgehog philosophy’ with Sarah Sands, Rowan Williams, Greta Thunberg and other luminaries would test anyone’s patience after 150 pages
The British Socrates
After vital work for British intelligence during the second world war, why did J.L. Austin devote the rest of his life to considering literally asinine questions?
True intellectual happiness
Nikhil Krishnan provides many amusing vignettes of Isaiah Berlin, A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle and others in the heyday of linguistic philosophy
Dreaming of Jerusalem
Justin Marozzi on the troubled history of a small, much-coveted country
Fear, loneliness and nostalgia: a return to Johannesburg
Oddly enough, the cabin service people on the plane are constantly eating during the night, helping themselves to the first-class…
Here comes everything
You can’t accuse John Gray of dodging the big questions, or indeed the big answers. His new book The Soul…
Beautiful dreamer
Despite it being a well known fact that Antonia Fraser had earthly parents, I had always imagined that she had…
Shady groves of academe
The scene is the common room of All Souls College, Oxford, in the first week of March 1963. It is…
