Berlin's main theme in these essays is the importance in the history of thought of dissenters whose ideas still challenge conventional wisdom.
Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, in 1909.
When he was six, his family moved to Russia, and in Petrograd in
1917 Berlin witnessed both Revolutions - Social Democratic and
Bolshevik. In 1921 he and his parents emigrated to England, where
he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi
College, Oxford. Apart from his war service in New York,
Washington, Moscow and Leningrad, he remained at Oxford thereafter
- as a Fellow of All Souls, then of New College, as Chichele
Professor of Social and Political Theory, and as founding President
of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British
Academy.
His published work includes Karl Marx, Russian Thinkers, Concepts
and Categories, Against the Current, Personal Impressions, The
Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind, The Roots of
Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the
Enlightenment, Freedom and Its Betrayal, Liberty, The Soviet Mind
and Political Ideas in the Romantic Age. As an exponent of the
history of ideas he was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli
Prizes; he also received the Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong
defence of civil liberties. He died in 1997.
A most remarkable intellectual achievement. There are few books
published in our time which more dazzlingly illuminate some of the
most crucial problems of western culture and civilisation
*Encounter*
Berlin expounds with idea of half-forgotten thinkers with luminous
clarity and imaginative empathy... exhilirating to read
*Observer*
The most imaginative, distinguished and erudite of historians of
ideas in this country
*Spectator*
Isaiah Berlin has a masterly grasp. He is one of the most concerned
liberal minds in Europe
*New Statesman*
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