Berlin - Building: letters 1960-1975

In this volume, the third of four, Isaiah Berlin creates a new institution in Oxford, securing his place in history as a charismatic intellectual leader as well as a prominent thinker in his own right. Wolfson College is today the largest graduate college in Oxford, a thriving research community imbued with Berlins remarkable personality.

In the period covered here (1960-75) Berlin dines with President John F. Kennedy on the day he is told of the Soviet missile bases in Cuba; JFK and his brother Robert are assassinated; the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967 creates problems that are still with us today; Richard M. Nixon succeeds Johnson as US President, and resigns over Watergate; and the long agony of the Vietnam War grinds on in the background.

At the same time Berlin publishes some of his most important work, including Four Essays on Liberty the key texts of his liberal pluralism and the essays later included in Vico and Herder. He talks on the BBC Third Programme (later Radio 3), and appears on television and in documentary films. He is a director of Covent Garden, and is appointed to the Order of Merit. He spends many months in the US, principally as a visiting professor at Harvard, CUNY and Princeton. He gives numerous lectures, especially his celebrated Mellon Lectures in Washington, DC, in 1965, later published as The Roots of Romanticism.

Behind the public events there is a constant stream of gossip and commentary, acerbic humour and warm personal feeling. Berlin writes about an enormous range of topics to a sometimes dazzling cast of correspondents. He clarifies and amplifies his ideas and reacts always vividly and entertainingly to the people and places he encounters. The social and intellectual comedy of the period finds its perfect observer and narrator, and Berlin displays his own personality in all its inspiring and maddening complexity. Here, too, are passionate letters to his wife Aline, included for the first time. This new volume leaves no doubt that Berlin is one of the very best letter-writers of the twentieth 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 Pauls 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 Chicele 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 Crooked Timber of Humanity, 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.

Henry Hardy, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is one of Isaiah Berlin's Literary Trustees. He has (co-)edited many other books by Berlin including this volumes two predecessors, Flourishing and Enlightening and other authors, and is also the editor of The Book of Isaiah: Personal Impressions of Isaiah Berlin (2009).

Mark Pottle is also a Fellow of Wolfson. He has (co-)edited the diaries and letters of Violet Bonham Carter, has collaborated in publishing a number of original First World War documents, and was Research Associate, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2000-2.

CONTENTS

THE LETTERS

Edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle

Additional research Brigid Allen, Victoria Benner, James Chappel, Georgina Edwards, Hugh Eveleigh, Jason Ferrell, Steffen Gro, Nicholas Hall, Serena Moore, Eleonora Paganini, Teisha Ruggiero, Patrick Wise-Walsh

Archival Research Michael Hughes

Consultant Russianists Tatiana Pozdnyakova, Josephine von Zitzewitz

Consultant Hebraist Norman Solomon

Transcription Betty Colquhoun, Esther Johnson

[D]reary people occasionally turn up useful facts and contribute to learning in all kinds of ways in which the more imaginative are too impatient to do.

IB to Dan Davin, 24 April 1968

*

KARL MARX

THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX

THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

RUSSIAN THINKERS

CONCEPTS AND CATEGORIES

AGAINST THE CURRENT

PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

THE CROOKED TIMBER OF HUMANITY

THE SENSE OF REALITY

THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND

THE FIRST AND THE LAST

THE ROOTS OF ROMANTICISM

THE POWER OF IDEAS

THREE CRITICS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

FREEDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

LIBERTY

THE SOVIET MIND

POLITICAL IDEAS IN THE ROMANTIC AGE

UNFINISHED DIALOGUE

FLOURISHING: LETTERS 19281946

ENLIGHTENING: LETTERS 19461960

*

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Letters The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2013
Taking Sides on Vietnam Isaiah Berlin 1967
Quotations from broadcasts and incoming letters their several authors or their estates 2013
Freedom As Politics: Popular Summary Bernard Crick 1966
The Clever Men of Oxford by Marc Mark Boxer 1973
Isaiah Berlin holding forth by Marc the estate of Mark Boxer 2013
Editorial matter Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle 2013

The Trustees of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust have asserted the right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 of Isaiah Berlin to be identified as the author of this work, and Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle as its editors

First published by Pimlico in 2016
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Chatto & Windus

penguin.co.uk/vintage

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780701185763

In memory of Jean Floud

19152013

The history of education as opposed to the theory of it is one of the most fascinating subjects in the world. The theory of education But I must not go on.