FLOURISHING is the first volume of a keenly awaited edition of the marvellously readable and entertaining letters of the most famous English intellectual of the last century.
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.
Isiah Berlin was one of the great letter-writers of the twentieth
century: witty, indiscreet, passionate, wise and unbuttoned. He
also lived through extraordinary moments of twentieth-century
history, and these letters capture those moments
*Michael Ignatieff, author of Isiah Berlin: A Life*
Reading this glorious collection of letters is, predictably, a
heady experience... rich and irresistable
*New Republic*
Incredibly readable and entertaining
*Good Book Guide*
Full of insights about everyone and everything. He was an
alpha-level gossip, the genius kind... a conversation of wit and
substance that you never want to end
*Scotsman*
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